



If 5y 

EOKGE M' Hardy, 



THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS 



EDITED BY 

OLIPHANT SMEATON 



^ Savonarola 

By Rev. George M'Hardy, D.D. 



Previous Volumes in this Series;— 

CRANMER AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 
By A. D. Innes, M.A. 

WESLEY AND METHODISM. 

By F. J. Snell, M.A. 

LUTHER AND THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 
By Prof. T. M. Lindsay, D.D. 

BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM. 

By Arthur Lillie, M.A. 

WILLIAM HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK. 

By James Sime, M.A., F.R.S.E. 

FRANCIS AND DOMINIC. 

By Prof. J. Herkless, D.D. 

For Complete List see End. 



THE WORLD^S EPOCH-MAKERS 



Savonarola 



By 

Rev. George M'Hardy, D.D. 



New York. Charles Scribner's Sons 

1901 






2C7f 



• •• • • 






f 



PREFACE 

♦ 

One of the Popes — Pius vii. — is reported to have said 
that when he got to heaven he should begin by asking 
whether Savonarola was a saint or a schismatic, a 
prophet or a charlatan. That was long a keenly de- 
bated question, and for generations the controversies 
waged over it had an absorbing attraction for many 
minds. Those controversies have in large measure 
subsided, yet the life-story out of which they sprang 
possesses a singular fascination still, owing partly to 
its dramatic surprises and the picturesque impressive- 
ness of its outstanding incidents, and partly also to the 
momentous character of the movements and changes 
that marked the period to which it belongs. 

In this volume an attempt m made to describe the 
figure which the great Dominican presented in his day 
and the work he strove to accomplish, as well as to 
indicate the place in history which may reasonably be 
claimed for him; and in performing this task my 
endeavour has been to introduce such touches of local 
colouring as may aid the reader in realising the scenes 
depicted. 

For the facts of Savonarola's career I have drawn 
chiefly from the following sources : — Villari's Life and 
Times of Girolamo Savonarola, Madden's Life and 



vi PREFACE 

Martyrdom of Girolamo Savonarola, Clark's Savon- 
arola, his Life and Times, Dr. Creighton's History of the 
Papacy, Harford's Life of Michael Angelo Buonarotti, 
with Meinoirs of Savonarola, Raphael, and Vittoria 
Colonna, Mrs. Oliphant's Makers of Florence, Milman's 
Savonarola, Erasmus, and Other Essays, Frederick 
Myers' Lectures on Great Men, George Eliot's Romola, 
and a brilliant sketch in R. A. Vaughan's Essays and 
Remains. Professor Villari's work, which stands first 
in this list, contains a full and exceedingly valuable 
store of information, skilfully arranged and used with 
admirable eiFect ; and it would be impossible to write 
on Savonarola without being laid under large obliga- 
tions to that book. I must acknowledge my indebted- 
ness to it, particularly for many of the quotations from 
speeches and sermons which are given in the course of 
the narrative. 

I have also been indebted to two writers who have 
treated the subject from the distinctively Roman Cath- 
olic point of view. One is Dr. Pastor, of the University 
of Innsbruck, who, in his History of the Popes, presents 
a lifelike record of the Florentine friar and of the 
circumstances of the times in which he moved. The 
other is Father Lucas, whose Fra Girolamo Savonarola 
brings together a rich collection of contemporary docu- 
mentary evidence bearing on the relations of parties, 
the political and ecclesiastical intrigues, and the cor- 
respondence between the magistracy of Florence and 
the Papal Court at Rome. Both these writers, while 
displaying a frank appreciation of the sincerity of 
Savonarola's intentions and the good service he rendered 
to morality and religion, yet condemn him severely for 
the stand he took in opposition to tlie demands of the 



PREFACE 



Vll 



Holy See ; and in order to avoid exaggeration or one- 
sidedness of statement on this and similar points, I have 
sought to weigh as carefully as possible the arguments 
they advance. 

With regard to the various characters and events, 
and the aspects of society and religion, which come into 
view in dealing with the main subject, other works of 
reference have been consulted, such as Gregorovius' 
History of Rome in the Middle Ages, Hallam's State 
of Europe during the Middle Ages, Milman's Latin 
Christianity, Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de Medici, 
E. G. Gardner's Story of Florence, besides articles in 
the leading Biographical Dictionaries and Encyclo- 
paedias. 

If this book can help to deepen interest in a memor- 
able and eventful historic drama, and in the extra- 
ordinary man who played in it so striking and, towards 
the close, so pathetic a part, it will have served the 
purpose for which it was written. 

GEORGE M'HARDY. 

Kirkcaldy, March 1901. 



li 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

1 



I. The Age and the Man .... 

II. Boyhood, Education, and Eaely Mental Struggles 10 

21 
IV. Florence, San Marco, and Lorenzo de Medici . 28 

V. The Leap into Fame . . . . .36 

VI. Florence again — The Mission Found, and the 



Sphere . 
VII. The Monk and the Magnifico 
VIII. Changes and Prophecies of Change 
IX. Preparing for the Flood 
X. Amid the Throes of Revolution 
XI. Charles VIII. in Florence 
XII. The Preacher as Lawgiver . 

XIII. The Dream of a Theocracy . 

XIV. The Burdens and Perils of Power 
XV. The Hand of the Pope. 

XVI. The Uncompromising "Witness . 

XVII. The Pyramid of Vanities 

XVIII. The Sentence of Excommunication 
XIX. Six Months of Silence 



42 

52 

61 

69 

78 

90 

95 

108 

123 

134 

143 

154 

162 

175 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 

XX. The Pope Defied 
XXI. Gathering Troubles . 
XXII. The Okdeal by Fike . 

XXIII. The Buksting of the Storm 

XXIV. The Tragic Close 
XXV. Review . 



PAGE 

187 
200 
208 
224 
242 
261 



SAVONAROLA 

CHAPTER I 

The Age and the Man 

The fifteenth century is remarkable as the period in 
which we can watch the spectacle of the modern world 
struggling into birth. Some of the forces which had 
been working through the long course of the Middle 
Ages were becoming exhausted ; some were producing 
their inevitable reactions ; some were expanding in 
power, bursting their old limits, and assuming more 
advanced forms ; new forces altogether were coming 
into play. The intellectual, political, moral, and re- 
ligious life of Europe was manifestly preparing for a 
fresh stage of development. The feudal system was 
breaking up, and great changes were transpiring in 
the organisation of states and nations. Commerce was 
striking out into new fields, and the commercial classes 
were rising to prominence in society. Art was spring- 
ing into unwonted activity, and in painting, sculpture, 
and architecture exhibiting amazing richness and 
beauty in its creations. On every side thought w^as 
stirring; the range of interests was widening; there 



2 , SAVONAROLA 

was a growing devotion to literature, and the inven- 
tion of printing came just in time to multiply the 
books that were wanted and to meet the craving for 
knowledge which had been awakened. The human 
mind was in a ferment of unrest, throwing off the 
bondage of old customs and traditional ideas, and 
vaguely straining after larger and freer scope for its 
native instincts and energies. In short, a movement 
was in progress destined to affect the whole future 
history of the Western world. 

That movement, so familiarly known as the Renais- 
sance, had been going on for several generations, but 
by the middle of the fifteenth century it had become a 
potent and pervasive influence. Its centre was in the 
great cities of Italy. There, for many years past, a 
revived passion for learning had arisen, and princes 
and nobles vied with each other in their patronage of 
intellectual and artistic genius. Greek scholars had 
visited Italy, bringing with them the manuscripts of 
their own ancient classics, and they had been warmly 
welcomed at the universities and the courts of the 
great. Italian students and students from other lands 
gathered round them, eager to share the culture to be 
derived from the literary treasures which they pos- 
sessed. The number of those disseminators of ancient 
Grecian lore was immensely increased when, in 1453, 
the capture of Constantinople by the Turks drove 
many of the learned men of that city to seek refuge 
in the land which was so ready to receive them as 
teachers. The result was a marvellous quickening of 
intellectual activity. Men broke away from the 
narrow and formal subtleties of the scholastic philo- 
sophy, and from the hard dogmatism of the scholastic 



THE AGE AND THE MAN 3 

theology, which, enforced by the august authority of 
the Roman Catholic Church, had for ages reigned 
supreme. It became the fashion in all sections of 
society, from the highest to the lowest, to be scholars 
and students of the New Learning. The freer ideas, 
the fresher and more natural views of life, drawn from 
the literature of pagan Greece, exerted an irresistible 
charm. A new philosophy of life began to be 
advocated and acted upon. Hitherto, through the 
overwhelming dominance of the Church, speculation 
and learning had dealt with questions mainly of 
mystical and theological interest ; and the shadow of 
the supernatural and the unseen hovered over men in 
all their thinking and conduct. Now liberty was 
claimed on behalf of the natural enjoyments of man, 
and on behalf of the free exercise of all man's natural 
faculties and energies. This was^ what has been 
designated the Humanist factor in the Renaissance. 
It was a protest against the spirit of the centuries 
that had been lived through, and the beginning of a 
new attitude towards the world and the secular side 
of life generally, and an insistence on a new con- 
ception of man's place and range of action amid the 
world's interests and affairs. The ancient classics 
were held up as the liter ae humaniores, the literature 
which nourished the fulness of man's being, and helped 
man to realise the variety of his own powers and the 
manifold attractions and uses of the things around 
him. 

Necessarily, the tendency of such a movement was 
rationalistic and sceptical. It generated a critical and 
inquiring temper, a disposition to question the grounds 
of established laws, traditions, and beliefs. But it led 



4 SAVONAROLA 

to no active crusade, no strenuous struggle to rectify 
the errors and evils of the world. The Humanists 
were not heroic reformers. They were content with 
the mental emancipation which their studies gave 
them. They revelled in their freedom of thought and 
in the unfettered exercise of their individual powers. 
They pursued their learned researches, compared texts 
and codices, wrote commentaries on their favourite 
authors, translated Greek books into Latin, composed 
verses and dissertations after the manner of the classic 
poet or historian they most admired — for the writers 
of the Renaissance were mainly imitators and copyists, 
and exhibited little originality either in thought or 
style. But amid all their scholarly industry they 
sought only their own culture, and recognised no 
mission higher than to make life as pleasant for them- 
selves as they could, and to leave the world to go as it 
pleased. It was therefore a thoroughly secular spirit 
which lay at the heart of the movement. It sapped 
reverence, high seriousness, self-restraint. It fostered 
a taste for what was graceful, beautiful, intellectually 
or artistically refined ; yet it left the mind destitute 
of any grand or noble aims, and exposed it to the 
insidious allurements of earthly ease, luxury, self- 
indulgence, and in many cases sensual gratification. 
Hence the widespread disregard of the common prin- 
ciples of morality which was too patent an accompani- 
ment of the Renaissance. Learning and scholarly 
polish, and not goodness or rectitude, formed the pass- 
port to social recognition and favour. The freedom of 
action claimed and taken led to deplorable vices and 
unscrupulous irregularities. The standard of conduct 
was pagan, not Christian. The Renaissance was not 



THE AGE AND THE MAN 5 

in itself immoral; nevertheless, in liberating the 
intellect from the trammels of scholastic and ecclesi- 
astical authority, it liberated also from the superstitious 
restraints, which hitherto had so far held them in 
check, the baser impulses and inclinations of human 
nature, and these carried men away into immoral 
excesses with the force of a pent-up torrent. Beneath 
a surface of brilliant culture gross appetites and low 
passions were allowed to work without any curb of 
acknowledged moral responsibility. "Italian society 
exhibited an almost unexampled spectacle of literary, 
artistic, and courtly refinement, crossed by brutalities 
of lust, treason, poisonings, assassination, violence." 

As is invariably the case when the educated classes 
are devoid of moral energy and principle, the political 
rulers of that period found their opportunity of aug- 
menting their own power and swelling their pomp and 
magnificence. The decline of faith meant the revival 
of despotism, as it always will. The princes who 
governed the several states into which Italy was 
divided developed into crafty tyrants, who, while 
posing as liberal patrons of art and scholarship, held 
their people in rigid subjection, humoured them occa- 
sionally by gaudy spectacles and shows, and intrigued 
against each other, leading all the time lives of 
voluptuous pleasure, greedy self-aggrandisement, and 
treacherous cruelty. 

To stem the tide of evil thus let loose, the Roman 
Church of that age was utterly incompetent. That 
Church, with her wide-branching influence, had grown 
corrupt through the very prestige of her outward 
success and unquestioned supremacy. Love of power, 
love of money, and love of display were glaringly 



6 SAVONAROLA 

patent in the higher orders of her ecclesiastics, where 
also, in numberless instances, the private habits and 
connections were an open disgrace, setting an example 
which was only too largely followed by the rank and 
file of the priesthood, and by men of all grades among 
the laity. True religion had not altogether fled the 
earth ; yet, although it survived in earnest hearts in 
hidden corners of society, the masses of the people 
had lapsed into a sordid, materialistic indifference ; 
and religion, as represented by the Church of Rome, 
was essentially a revived pagan cult, embellished by 
the glittering veneer of a splendid and pompous 
ceremonialism. 

It was amid this welter of intellectual unrest, and 
moral, religious, and political corruption, that Savon- 
arola appeared. With soul acutely alive to the peril 
for Italy and for Europe inherent in the existing 
licence and grossness, the Dominican friar set himself, 
as his one governing aim, to w^ork for the purification 
of the Church and for the restoration of society to 
faith and righteousness. Early in his career he caught 
a firm grasp of the conception so vital to the world, 
that moral principle, loyalty to rectitude, and rever- 
ence for the Divine wdll, are really the forces which 
make for progress. His life was an incarnation of that 
idea. He toiled and preached at Florence — the very 
heart of the Renaissance culture and pagan sensuous- 
ness — to get it realised in private conduct, social 
manners, and the administration of the Church and the 
State. He was well versed himself in the New Learn- 
ing; his mind, at first steeped in scholastic lore, had 
opened to the fascination of the classic literature of 
ancient Greece ; but the pure and exalted moral fervour 



THE AGE AND THE MAN 7 

which breathed in the Christian Scriptures had thrilled 
and mastered his soul. An ardent and unwearied 
student, and possessed of high scholarly attainments, 
he was no enemy to culture ; the definite object of all 
his effort was to consecrate culture, and make it nobler, 
more helpful to the world and its activities, by infusing 
into it the spirit of righteousness. Right in the midst 
of the Renaissance movement, with its restless thought, 
untrammelled freedom of inquiry, easy morals, and 
hollow religious formalism, Savonarola rose as a wit- 
ness for the supreme authority of purity and goodness 
as absolutely essential to the advancement of mankind ; 
and from first to last he laboured to put a higher 
earnestness into the manifold liberated energies of his 
age, striving to turn them to grander and more bene- 
ficent uses, that^ thereby, under such lofty inspiration, 
they might become mighty agencies in the world's 
elevation and happiness. He was not simply a 
Reformer, but a Prophet of Righteousness, and his 
life-work throughout was a strenuous testimony for 
righteousness. In the name of righteousness he 
struggled to restrain the immoralities in which not 
only the common people, but the educated, so freely 
indulged. In the name of righteousness he lifted his 
voice and used his influence against the vicious tyran- 
nies which were stifling the life of Italy ; and in the 
name of righteousness he put forth all his power for 
the cleansing of the Papal Court and the high places 
of the Church from their flagrant scandals and abuses. 
True, his success was not such, either in form or 
degree, as he had fondly hoped. But his efibrt told 
in ways and in quarters which the subsequent course 
of events only gradually revealed ; and the spirit he 



8 SAVONAROLA 

left behind had a far-reaching and silently moulding 
power. Sharing in the vivid mental quickening of 
the Renaissance, and profoundly stirred by the freer 
temper which it kindled, Savonarola, by his passionate 
protest for righteousness, rescued the Renaissance 
■horn its utterly pagan bent, and saved it from de- 
generating hopelessly into the moral corruption with 
which it was threatened through the sensuous and 
materialistic tendencies associated with it. He fur- 
nished the antiseptic which prevented it from fester- 
ing; he communicated to it a higher and healthier 
impulse ; and in this way he strove to make it more 
"directly serviceable in promoting the cause of true 
well-being, freedom, and progress. 

Thus Savonarola occupies a notable place among the 
men who have contributed to the shaping of history. 
He was the first mind in Italy, if not in Europe, to 
turn to elFective original use the fresh intellectual life 
which the Renaissance had awakened — the first mind, 
nurtured under Renaissance influences, that struck out 
on a distinctly independent line, and brought the forces 
set free by the Renaissance to bear on some bold effort 
which should mark a new move forward towards a 
higher civilisation and a larger good for society and 
the race. Many others gathered up the scholarship of 
the Renaissance ; many developed the critical faculty 
which it fostered; many imitated the polished grace 
of the restored classical literature. But to vitalise the 
learning and the quickened energies which the Re- 
naissance supplied by a lofty enthusiasm for righteous- 
ness, and then so to use them as to break away into a 
fresh path of endeavour, suited to the needs of the age, 
and opening up to larger achievements in the ages to 



THE AGE AND THE MAN 9 

come — that was Savonarola's distinction. Amid imita- 
tions, pedantries, dilettanteisms, and elaborate scholarly- 
trifling, his soul burned as with a fire for the great 
spiritual interests of existence ; and the flame touched 
other hearts and lives, and set them palpitating with 
new hopes, new and purer aspirations, to such an ex- 
tent as to give a higher direction to the emancipated 
life and mental activity of his time, and to convert that 
life and activity into the upward-straining, progressive 
force which brought the modern world into being. 



CHAPTER II 

Boyhood, Education, and Early Mental 
Struggles 

GiROLAMO Savonarola was born at Ferrara on the 14th 
of September 1452, the third in a family of seven 
children — five sons and two daughters. So far as can 
be learned, his fatlier, Niccoio, a gentleman of culture, 
followed no definite profession, but held a favourable 
standing in literary and fashionable society. His 
mother, Elena — sprung from the noble house of 
Buonaccorsi at Mantua — seems to have been a woman 
of superior mind and decided force of character. She 
laid a strong: hold on her son's affections, and exerted 
over him an influence for good which he gratefully 
recognised in after years. 

At first Girolamo's education was mainly directed 
by his grandfather, Michele Savonarola, a distinguished 
professor and physician, who had gained renown by his 
medical writings and by his eminence as a teacher of 
science. The origrinal home of Michele was Padua, 
where his family had long enjoyed an honourable 
name, but by the invitation of that liberal patron of 
learning and art, Niccoio d'Este, Marquis — soon after- 
wards created Duke — of Ferrara, he had been induced 
to remove with his household to the latter city; and 



BOYHOOD AND EDUCATION ii 

there he had been established for some years in the 
dignified post of physician to Niccolo's court. He is 
described as a kindly, devout man, esteemed by all 
classes for his benevolence and charity as well as for 
his scholarship and mental gifts. Girolamo was his 
favourite grandson, and, finding him an apt pupil, 
Michele devoted himself with loving care to the train- 
ing of his mind. The boy was exceptionally reserved 
and silent, delighting in seclusion, and taking no part 
in the pastimes and amusements of those of his own 
age. Ferrara was often the scene of gay pageants 
and splendid processions; for the ruling Este family 
revelled in displays of lavish extravagance, and loved 
to flaunt their power and wealth before the people's 
eyes by parades of brilliant show; but none of those 
dazzling spectacles appears to have had any efiect in 
kindling young Girolamo's imagination or drawing 
him out of himself. He lived in a quiet world of 
his own, and had no taste for the vivid excitements 
around him, thus revealing at an early stage the 
sombre disposition which, all through, largely coloured 
his life. 

It was early apparent, however, that his capacities 
for learning were quick and keen. By the general 
consent of the household he was destined for the 
medical profession ; and the grandfather took a proud 
pleasure in preparing him for a successful career in the 
same vocation as that in which his own laurels had 
been won. He introduced him early to the study of 
Roman literature, and led him on to the works of the 
ancient authors then held in greatest repute. 

All too soon this fond and capable instructor was 
called away by death, and just when entering his teens 



12 SAVONAROLA 

Girolamo was left to the guidance of his father for the 
prosecution of his educational course. He was sent to 
the public academy of Ferrara, where the scholastic 
philosophy was still in vogue. In those days, notwith- 
standing the spread of the New Learning, the gateway 
to the learned professions — the medical no less than 
the others — lay through the rigid logical drill which 
the scholastic philosophy supplied. The books in use 
were translations of Aristotle and commentaries on his 
writings, and these at the outset were the means by 
which the world of knowledge was opened up to 
youthful minds. Girolamo threw himself with ardour 
into this branch of study. Aristotle's skilful dialectics 
and subtleties of thought roused his interest intensely, 
and afforded a vigorous discipline for his reasoning 
powers ; and so manifest to his teachers and fellow- 
students were his acuteness and grasp of apprehension, 
that great expectations as to his future began to be 
entertained. 

Yet, deeply as Aristotle had stirred him, it was in 
the works of Thomas Aquinas, to which he next turned, 
that he found the most exhilarating stimulus to his 
intellectual enthusiasm. Here he was ushered into the 
realm of theological speculation, and under the leading 
of that new master-mind he was influenced profoundly. 
Instead of testing all knowledge by strict logical forms 
and compressing it within the accepted philosophical 
moulds, as the scholastic writers were accustomed to 
do, it was the peculiarity of Aquinas that he made the 
teaching of Scripture the supreme touchstone of all 
doctrines and beliefs. Such a method of dealing with 
the greatest subjects of human inquiry fairly captivated 
the younp- scholar of Ferrara, and disclosed fields of 

\ 



BOYHOOD AND EDUCATION 13 

research all the more quickening to his faculties 
because they were novel and fresh. From Aquinas, 
he afterwards said, " he had learned nearly all the 
knowledge he had acquired." Day after day, and 
often far into the night, he pored over the learned 
disquisitions of the "Angelical Doctor," and conned 
the pages of Holy Writ, till his mind was permeated 
and his brain fired by the lofty ideas which met a 
craving of his spirit, long and restlessly felt. 

For, during all this time, the lad's grave, brooding 
disposition had been deepening steadily. In striking 
contrast to Francis of Assisi, whose boyhood and youth 
brimmed over with wild frolic and light-hearted mirth, 
young Savonarola held himself aloof from all the 
diversions and gaieties usually so tempting at his 
years. He was never seen in the haunts of fashion- 
able resort, and all festive merry-making he scrupu- 
lously shunned. There were splendid receptions and 
assemblies occasionally held at the Este palace — a 
ponderous castled structure, standing in picturesque 
dignity in the midst of the city, with its four red- 
coloured square towers and massive walls; and once 
he was persuaded to join his parents in their attend- 
ance there, but no consideration could induce him to 
enter within its precincts again. It was not because he 
lacked interest in life or in the pursuits of his fellow- 
men, but because he had come more and more to look 
on life with serious eyes. Far from being a mis- 
anthrope, he had a tender, sympathetic heart ; and he 
was saddened by the wrong and wickedness he beheld 
rampant in the world. As the years of his youth 
advanced, this feeling of sadness grew more pronounced. 
The reckless revelry of his native city pained him. 



14 SAVONAROLA 

He was haunted by the horror of all the vice and 
crime and profanity so patent on every hand — the 
gross frivolity of the masses, the corruption of those in 
high places, the shameless lives of the magnates of 
society, and even of many of the great dignitaries of 
the Church. For it was an age of deep moral 
degeneracy in which his lot was cast. Men plumed 
themselves on their learning and their culture, their 
taste for literature and the arts. The new impulse to 
study and thought given by the reintroduction into 
Western Europe of the great masterpieces of ancient 
Greek poetry and philosophy, which for generations 
had fallen into neglect, was at this time creating a 
vague unsettlement on every hand. The Renaissance 
was now coming in like a flood, and all over Italy fresh 
ideas were stirring, the general mind was breaking free 
from stereotyped beliefs and long-established routine. 
But along with the intellectual quickening thus pro- 
duced, there was also a grave loosening of all moral 
restraints, a widespread abandonment to the laxity 
and the sensuousness of the old pagan life. As 
Savonarola looked round with that earnest gaze of his, 
and pondered it all, his soul rose in indignation. 
Religion had early touched him with its solemn and 
august ideas, but now his religious feelings took on a 
more melancholy hue. Life and the world became to 
his vision all vanity and vexation of spirit ; and this 
impression was deepened when, in his later youth, 
Ferrara was turned into an arena of fierce and deadly 
strife over a dispute regarding the succession to the 
Este dukedom, and he saw the streets run with the 
blood of slaughtered citizens. 

Thus the sad condition of society lay like a burden 



BOYHOOD AND EDUCATION 15 

on his heart. Seasons of prayer and fasting, and of 
silent devotion in church, became more prolonged and 
frequent. In lonely walks, too, outside the city gates, 
and along the green banks of the Po, he spent hours 
revolving in thought the decay of goodness and the 
hopeless depravity of the times. What were all the 
subtle speculations of the schools, what all the glitter 
and spell of the New Learning, when sin and debase- 
ment were blighting and darkening the whole aspect 
of human life ! 

Sometimes he found a solace in playing on his lute, 
soothing the agitations of his soul by the charms of 
music. Sometimes, again, like many another youth, 
brooding over the evils of the world and the mysteries 
of existence, he sought in verse composition a relief to 
his pent-up emotions. In 1472, when twenty years of 
age, he wrote a poem entitled " De Ruina Mundi," 
which is particularly remarkable, not for any graces 
of diction, but for the terseness and vigour with which 
it gives voice to his deep religious passion and the 
sorrow he felt in view of the prevailing corruption. 
It is certainly a gloomy enough picture which the 
poem presents of the vices and wrongs of an impious 
generation, — the whole world turned from God, and 
abandoned to pride, luxury, and licentiousness; all 
virtue and goodness vanished, nowhere a shining light, 
no one taking shame for his sins ; the sceptre swayed 
by men who wait for prey, honours and wealth falling 
to those who rob widows and orphans entrusted to their 
care, and trample on the poor; and while the writer 
declares that were it not for his belief in Providence 
he would have been utterly confounded, he breathes a 
prayer that his own heart may be kept unstained. 



I 6 SAVONAROLA 

Into the very midst of those gloomy reflections there 
broke a gleam of youthful romance, which promised 
for a while to refresh his spirit and brighten his 
conception of the world and of life. There had come 
to reside at Ferrara, and in the house next to Savon- 
arola's home, an exiled citizen of Florence, of the noble 
family of the Strozzi, bringing with him a natural 
daughter, whose beauty captivated the moody student's 
aflections. The spell of life's young dream was upon 
him, and for a time he revelled in visions of happiness. 
One day, however, the spell was rudely broken, for 
when he availed himself of an opportunity which 
oflered to avow his love and his hope, he was met 
with a repulse of haughty scorn — "Do you imagine 
that the blood and the great house of the Strozzi could 
form an alliance with that of Savonarola ? " Staggered 
for the moment, the mortified suitor was provoked to 
reply to the lady by a stinging reminder of the stain 
resting on her birth; and that rendered the rupture 
hopeless and complete. 

Thrown back once more on his own dark thoughts, 
Savonarola began to contemplate the idea of devoting 
himself exclusively to the religious life. He had 
gradually given up all thought of entering the medical 
profession ; and the world looked so vain and evil in 
his eyes, that the only rest possible, as it seemed, 
was to retire from its wretched debasement and shut 
himself up within holy walls. Yet he had grea-^ 
and serious hesitations ere he could determine on 
momentous a step, hesitations arising chiefly from a 
sense of the grief and disappointment to his parents 
which he would thereby cause; and so for two or 
three years he lingered in troubled perplexity, praying 



BOYHOOD AND EDUCATION 17 

again and again for light as to the path he should 
take. Once, it is told, he spent a whole night in 
anxious thought regarding his course, having first 
sprinkled his body with the coldest water to keep 
his brain clear and assist his meditations. He turned 
to the writings of Plato, which were then engaging 
the keenest interest in all the learned circles of the 
land, but though he thus derived a vivid intellectual 
pleasure, his religious instincts were not satisfied, and 
a restless anxiety still haunted him. 

At last the way to a decision was cleared by a 
sermon he chanced to hear during a visit to Faenza, 
where he entered a church in which an Augustinian 
monk was preaching. The monk spoke some im- 
pressive, searching word, a word which Savonarola 
would never repeat, but which to the end he carried 
in his heart, and that word settled for him the critical 
question which he had been pondering over so long. 
He returned to Ferrara resolved to consecrate himself 
to the monastic life. 

Yet the resolution was hard to put into effect. It 
seemed as if his mother divined what was coming, and 
was following his every mood and movement with 
watchful and pained concern. He feared to reveal 
his secret, lest he should break down and abandon 
his purpose ; and for another year, therefore, the 
mental struggle went on. Then came an incident 
which all his biographers dwell upon with peculiar 
(be .derness. One day, moved by the pressure of feeling 
within, he took his lute and played on it a strain so 
melancholy that his mother turned upon him with 
a look of intense sorrow, and exclaimed, " My son, 
that is a sign of parting ; " but by a great effort he 



I 8 SAVONAROLA 

kept his eyes on the ground and continued with 
trembling hand to touch the strings, without ventur- 
ing to answer. 

A sign of parting it actually proved ; for, on the 
day following, the 24th of April 1475, the irrevocable 
step was taken. It was the festival of St. George, 
and all Ferrara was gay with holiday crowds and 
tokens of rejoicing; and when the rest of the family 
had gone forth to join in the celebration, Savonarola 
stole quietly from his father's house, walked the 
twenty-eight miles across the plains to Bologna, and 
there knocked for admission at the doors of the 
Dominican convent, where he was at once received 
as a novice, leaving, as he devoutly imagined, the 
world with its vices and vanities behind him. 

After he had gone, there was found among his books 
and papers a short essay, entitled " On Contempt of 
the World," which shows how painfully he had been 
impressed by the wickedness around him. " Every- 
thing is full of impiety, of usury and robbery, foul 
and wicked blasphemies, fornication, adultery, and all 
uncleanness, murder and envy, ambition and pride, 
hypocrisy and falseness, crime and iniquity. Virtues 
are turned into vices, and vices into virtues. . . . 
Men are summoned to penitence by disasters, earth- 
quakes, and storms of wind ; but they do not hearken. 
They are summoned by floods, diseases, famines ; but 
they do not hearken. They are summoned by the im- 
pious deeds of the overweening Turks ; but they do 
not hearken. They are summoned by the affectionate 
voices of preachers and servants of God; but they 
do not hearken. All, in fine, are summoned by the 
natural pricks of conscience ; but they do not hearken." 



BOYHOOD AND EDUCATION 19 

Two days later he wrote a letter to his father, with 
a view to assuage the grief which he knew was sure to 
be felt in the home he had so secretly forsaken. It is 
a memorable letter, in which the calm, deliberate resolve 
of the youthful ascetic is exquisitely touched with the 
tenderness of a loving son. It contains his reasons for 
abandoning the world and choosing the religious life. 
The desire arose, he said, from beholding " the iniquity 
of men, the debauchery, the adultery, the theft, the 
pride, the idolatry, the dreadful prof aneness into which 
the age has fallen, so that one can no longer find a 
righteous man. For this many times a day have I 
uttered this verse with tears — ' Heu fuge crudeles 
terras ! fuge litus avarum ! ' And this because I could 
not endure the great wickedness of certain parts of 
Italy. Everywhere I saw virtue despised and vice held 
in honour. This was the greatest suffering I could have 
in this world; therefore daily I entreated my Lord 
Jesus Christ, that He would raise me from the mire. 
Continually I made my prayer with the greatest devo- 
tion to God, saying, ' Show me the path in which I 
should walk, for to Thee do I lift up my soul.' Now God 
has been pleased in His infinite mercy to show it to me, 
and I have received it. ... Jesus, rather let me die 
a thousand deaths than that I should be so ungrateful 
as to oppose Thy will. Then, my dearest father, you 
have rather to thank our Jesus than to weep. He 
gave you a son, and has not only preserved him to 
some extent from evil to the age of twenty-two years, 
but has vouchsafed to choose him for His knight mili- 
tant. And do you not consider it a great mercy to have 
a son made a knight of Jesus Christ ? . . . Do you not 
think it is a great affliction to me to be separated from 



20 SAVONAROLA 

you ? Believe me, never since I was born had I greater 
sorrow and anguish of mind than in abandoning my 
own father, and going away among strangers, to sacri- 
tice my body to Jesus Christ, and to give up my own 
will to those whom I never knew. . . . Because I know 
you lament that I left you secretly, almost as a fugi- 
tive, let me tell you that such was my distress and the 
suffering of my inmost soul at having to leave you, 
that if I had expressed it, I verily believe my heart 
would have broken, and I should have changed my 
purpose ; therefore do not wonder that I did not tell 
you. ... I beg you then, my dearest father, to cease 
to weep ; give me not more sadness and grief than I 
have, — not of regret for what I have done, for indeed 
I would not revoke that though I expected to become 
greater than Caesar Augustus; but because I am of 
Hesh, as j^ou are, and sense is opposed to reason, and 1 
must maintain a cruel warfare, that the devil may not 
p-ain advantap-e over me. . . . Nothing' remains, but 
that I beseech you that, as a man of strong mind, you 
would comfort my mother; and I beg her and -you to 
bestow your blessing upon me, and I will ever pray for 
your souls." 

With those words Savonarola bade farewell to his 
father's house and to the associations of his youth. 



CHAPTER III 

Monastic Life at Bologna 

Savonarola was in his twenty-third year when he 
passed within the gates of the convent of St. Dominic 
at Bologna and took upon him the monastic vows. 
His choice of a refuge among the Dominican friars was 
chiefly determined, no doubt, by his love for Thomas 
Aquinas, who had been a distinguished ornament of 
that order. In applying for entrance he made no pre- 
tensions to peculiar sanctity, but with deepest humility 
asked only to be received as a lay brother, and to be 
permitted to perform the most menial duties — to work 
in the garden, make clothes for the monks, or discharge 
the domestic services required by the brethren. The 
special attraction which the retirement of the monastic 
life might be supposed to have for him, as offering an 
opportunity of indulging his intellectual tastes and 
pursuing his favourite studies, did not, at the outset at 
least, exercise much influence over his mind. His one 
mastering desire was to escape from the distractions 
and iniquities of the world, do penance for his sins, and 
devote himself to quiet communion with God. 

And soon the sincerity of his purpose was manifest 
in the austere habits he practised within the convent 
walls. He was conscientiously strict in rendering obedi- 

21 



2 2 SAVONAROLA 

ence to his superiors and to the rules of the order. His 
fasts were severe, his vigils of prayer long and fre- 
quently renewed ; and to his companions, Fra Girolamo, 
with his spare figure, worn to a shadow by rigid self- 
mortifications, appeared like a ghost moving about in 
their midst. He ate only enough to sustain life. His 
garments were of the coarsest kind, though always 
scrupulously clean. His bed was a sack of straw laid 
on roughly crossed pieces of wood, and its only cover- 
ing a blanket of wool. By such austerities he sought 
to calm his soul and rise into closer fellowship with 
the Divine mind and will. 

Speedily enough, however, he discovered that, though 
the pursuits of the world had been relinquished, the 
spirit of the world had not been escaped. Ambition 
and selfishness, he found, were little less actively at 
work under monkish hoods and amid monastic seclu- 
sion than in the busy haunts of men, and the aims 
cherished there were neither so pure nor so lofty as 
he had fondly dreamed. Disappointing, too, was the 
revelation, which ere long dawned upon him, of the 
corruption that festered behind the imposing stateli- 
ness of ecclesiastical life. For, admitted now, as he 
was, within the cloisters, he saw the religious world 
from the inside, and was shocked and vexed by what 
he beheld. More fully than ever he became aware of 
the gross scandals and abuses of the Church — of the 
intrigues of cardinals and prelates for place and 
power, of the bribes oflfered and taken for dignities 
and preferment, of the immoralities practised even at 
Rome itself, and of the infamous avarice and un- 
scrupulousness of the reigning Pope, Sixtus IV. — a 
man whose low and grasping ways contributed to the 



MONASTIC LIFE AT BOLOGNA 23 

degradation of the Papacy to a degree which was 
productive of endless evil in his own time and long 
after he had gone. Such flagrant iniquities in the 
sacred province of religion moved the depths of Fra 
Girolamo's righteous soul, and within a year of his 
entrance into the convent he wrote a poem, " De Ruina 
Ecclesiae," in which his holy anger flashed forth. The 
poem is full of symbolism and brilliant imagery. 
Savonarola describes the Church as appearing to him 
in the guise of a chaste and venerable virgin, and from 
her forlorn, dishevelled aspect he is prompted to ex- 
claim. Where are the precious stones and the fine 
diamonds, where the burning lamps of faith, the 
beautiful sapphires, the white robes of purity, the 
sweet chaunts of devotion of former days ? And when 
he asks, Who it is that has thus dethroned her and 
marred her peace ? she tells him that her place has 
been invaded by " a false, proud harlot," and that she 
has been driven to seek shelter in a poor cave, where 
she leads her sad life with many a tear. Then she 
takes him to her lonely refuge, and shows him the 
wounds from which she is suffering, until his heart is 
fired with indignation, and he bursts out in a passion- 
ate yearning to shatter and beat down the horrible 
system of wrong : " God, lady, that I could break 
those great wings ! " But the only reply he receives 
is, that mortal tongue must not speak of it, nor is it 
allowed to take up arms : " Weep and be silent, for 
this is best." 

He did keep silent, restraining himself with diffi- 
culty from delivering the vehement protest to which 
he felt inwardly impelled. New work was given him 
which served to occupy his time, and in a measure also 



24 SAVONAROLA 

to divert his thoughts. He was raised above the 
position of a mere lay brother, for which at first he 
had so humbly craved. For his superiors in the 
convent were not long in discovering that they had 
a scholar of exceptional learning and ability in their 
midst, and they resolved to turn his gifts to account 
in a higher form of usefulness than that in which he 
had requested to be employed. He was called upon 
to undertake the duty of teaching the novices and 
superintending their studies in philosophy and theo- 
logy. The task was one which he accepted with 
reluctance. It threw him back once more amid the 
arid subtleties and dialectics of the Schoolmen — " from 
the Aristotle of the world to the Aristotle of the 
cloister ; " it interfered with the leisure for retirement 
and devotion which he had hoped to enjoy, while it 
disappointed the craving of his spirit for contact with 
living truth and Divine realities; and hence, though 
he yielded a due obedience, his heart secretly rebelled. 
Gradually, however, he secured time for the studies 
more congenial to his bent and taste. His old favourite, 
Thomas Aquinas, he never abandoned. He also re- 
sumed his acquaintance with Plato. Though swayed 
by ideals higher than those of the Humanists, his 
intellectual interest, which could not be suppressed, 
made him susceptible to the attractions of the re- 
covered Greek literature which the Humanists so 
ardently extolled, and on the knowledge of which they 
set so great a value. And in reading the Dialogues 
of Plato, with their imaginative glow and mystic 
depths and heights, he felt himself in contact with a 
rich and superbly endowed mind. His own mind was 
fertilised and stimulated; and he made some efforts 



( 



MONASTIC LIFE AT BOLOGNA 25 

to employ his literary powers on the themes which 
the great Greek thinker discussed. The attempt, 
however, was ultimately relinquished, after his view 
of the practical worth of such studies underwent a 
change. There grew on him more and more a feeling 
of the vanity of all mere human speculation — a feeling 
that found expression in one of his discourses at a 
later date : " What does all this wisdom of philosophy 
serve for, if a poor old woman, established in the faith, 
knows more of the true wisdom than Plato?" He 
turned with ever-increasing relish to works of devo- 
tion like those of Cassian and Augustine, and thus 
sought to feed his. inner life. But it was in the 
Holy Scriptures that he found the most satisfying 
nourishment for the needs of his heart. He is said 
to have committed the whole of the sacred books to 
memory, thus acquiring a mastery of biblical ideas 
and also of biblical phraseology which furnished him 
with an undoubted source of power in his work in 
after years. The Old Testament especially attracted 
him. He revelled in its bold and startling imagery, 
its vivid and stirring appeals, its stern denunciations 
of sin, its awful warnings of judgment in the name 
of a Righteous God; for it seemed to his mind that 
nothing could be more suited to the needs of his own 
time, or more fitted to shake the evil world around 
him and arrest the wickedness abounding alike in 
society. Church, and State. And as he pondered 
ever more deeply the burning words of the ancient 
prophets, his soul was kindled to impassioned fervour, 
till often he felt as if he were himself inspired. It 
was then, too, that he began the practice w^hich he 
carried on through life, of making notes in his own 



26 SAVONAROLA 

minute and beautiful handwriting on the margins of 
his Bible and favourite devotional books. 

Thus at Bologna, amid steady work in scholastic 
teaching, varied by strict vigils of prayer and reverent 
study of Scripture, the mind and soul of Fra Girolamo 
unfolded towards maturity. But the Dominican breth- 
ren were distinctively a preaching order. It was one 
of their recognised functions to rear a succession of 
men trained to stand in the pulpit and administer 
religious instruction to the crowd of worshippers ; and 
in course of time it was determined to employ the 
talented and zealous young friar in this department of 
work. Accordingly, he was sent to visit several of the 
convents in other cities of Northern Italy, that through 
them he might obtain opportunities of speaking in the 
churches. It was thus that in 1481 he was appointed 
to preach at Ferrara, his native city. He went there 
with no willing mind, for, having formed an austere 
conception of his vocation as a monk, he dreaded any 
revival of the associations and affections of former 
years. Consequently, he held but little intercourse 
with his own family, and from all ordinary acquaint- 
ances kept entirely aloof. So far as his preaching was 
concerned, no appreciable impression appears to have 
been produced. His sermons failed to tell, — partly, it 
may have been, because, as he said, quoting the words 
of Christ, " no man is a prophet in his own country," 
or perhaps chiefly because he was yet only a novice in 
the practice of public speech. He could touch the con- 
science with marvellous success when engaged in close 
personal dealing with men, as in the case specially 
recorded, of his encounter with some profane, blas- 
pheming soldiers, who were journeying with him once 



MONASTIC LIFE AT BOLOGNA 27 

in a boat on the Po, and who were so affected by his 
searching remonstrances and appeals, that they threw 
themselves in contrition at his feet, crying for absolu- 
tion. But in the pulpit, when addressing men in the 
mass, he had not yet found his power. 

Meanwhile, the clouds of war were gathering over 
the land. Hostilities were threatened against Ferrara 
by the Venetians, on the one hand, and on the other 
by Pope Sixtus iv., who saw an opportunity of fur- 
thering the fortunes of his family and securing a share 
of the spoil. In the general anxiety which prevailed, 
most of the Dominican monks were ordered by their 
Superior to retire to places of safety. Savonarola was 
instructed to proceed, not to his own monastery at 
Bologna, with which he had been connected now for 
well-nigh seven years, but to the convent of San 
Marco at Florence; and to Florence accordingly he 
went, there to find the scene of the real distinctive 
work of his life, though all unaware as yet of the 
actual form which that work would assume, and little 
divining the brilliant triumphs which would attend it, 
or the tragic climax to which it would lead. 



CHAPTER IV 

Florence, San Marco, and Lorenzo de Medici 

It is easy to imagine the glow of exhilaration and 
hope which would kindle the heart of the young friar 
as, on crossing the Apennines, he looked down on the 
valley of the Arno, and the vision of Florence with its 
Cathedral dome, tall towers, gleaming river, and stately 
array of buildings and bridges, all set in a sunny land- 
scape of vineyards and olive-gardens, burst upon his 
gaze; for then, as now, Florence, beheld from the 
slopes of the Tuscan hills, must have been a ravishing 
sight. He had left Ferrara saddened by profound 
sorrow for the calamities of the country, but the 
spectacle of that fair city, where nature and art have 
combined to create a picture of superb loveliness, was 
surely fitted in some measure at least to chase away 
the shadows which darkened his soul. 

There was much also in the convent of San Marco 
which might be expected to soothe and brighten his 
thoughts. Kebuilt a generation before, through the 
liberality of Cosimo de Medici, as a home for a reformed 
community of Dominicans, that convent had been 
endowed with a library of rare value, and beautified 
by the works of the Fra Beato Angelico which 
adorned its walls. The outer cloister, the chapter- 

28 



FLORENCE, SAN MARCO, DE MEDICI 29 

house, the very cells even, all shone with the deli- 
cately coloured frescoes, still quite fresh, of the pure 
and sweet- souled artist-monk, who often painted with 
the tears streaming down his cheeks. Those frescoes 
themselves possessed a peculiar charm, while the lofty 
conceptions they embodied were singularly adapted to 
minister to devotion and prayer. 

Moreover, the memory of the first Prior, the good 
and saintly Antonino, still lingered as a subtle, ele- 
vating influence about the place. Antonino had been 
the pattern of pious aspiration, the friend of reverent 
study, the apostle of charity; and his meek spirit, 
active benevolence, and love of all that was noble 
and pure, had left its impress in a higher standard 
of thought and life. Thus San Marco had become 
a centre of attraction for the more learned and devout 
brothers of the order, and for many men of distinc- 
tion who sought refreshment for their spirit in the 
atmosphere of superior refinement and earnestness 
which breathed around. 

Such was the convent within which Savonarola, 
on coming to Florence, took up his abode. And out- 
side was the teeming city, with its chatty, shrewd, 
quick-witted, energetic people; its gay, sprightly, 
vigorous life ; its heavy-fronted streets and massive, 
sombre squares, relieved here and there by exquisite 
specimens of the architect's, sculptor's, or bronze- 
designer's art ; its imposing churches and their 
hosts of priests ; its skilled handicrafts, its shops and 
bustling markets, and great commercial houses, where 
a flourishing trade was carried on ; and over all, the 
pervasive, masterful rule of its Medici prince, whose 
versatile genius, force of character, and astute states- 



30 SAVONAROLA 

manship made him one of the foremost figures of 
his time. Savonarola was now close to the beat of a 
larger, more vivid life than ever he had yet known. 

Gradually, however, as he looked out on that vivid 
life from the cloistered seclusion of San Marco, he 
began to perceive much that was calculated to cast a 
shadow once more over his naturally brooding mind. 
For generations Florence enjoyed the rank and privi- 
leges of a free republic, but since the days when the 
house of Medici rose to power, though the form of a 
republic was still maintained, the freedom was prac- 
tically gone. The first stroke was dealt by Cosimo de 
Medici, who, taking advantage of internal dissension, 
succeeded by an adroit use of his vast wealth and 
popularity in working himself up to a position of 
supremacy, nominating the regular magistrates and 
holding the control of the State in his own hands. Yet, 
in spite of his unscrupulous ambition and the merci- 
lessness he could on occasion display, it must be said 
that Cosimo de Medici kept a firm grasp on the regard 
of the people by his munificent charity, his zeal in 
beautifying Florence, and his liberality in promot- 
ing culture and all branches of artistic work. He 
was followed by his son Piero, who died after a brief 
term of rule. Then came the famous Lorenzo de 
Medici, whose gifts and splendour were throwing a 
glamour over Florence and all Italy when Savonarola 
arrived. 

Like his grandfather Cosimo, Lorenzo de Medici was 
borne up in the exercise of dictatorial power by a 
strong current of popular favour. He was brilliant, 
aftable, and full of wit, and the very dash of his per- 
sonality drew to him an immense amount of admira- 



FLORENCE, SAN MARCO, DE MEDICI 31 

tion. He knew how to humour the citizens and recon- 
cile them to the loss of their liberty by frequent shows, 
processions, and public festivities, and by the profuse 
embellishment of the city with buildings in which they 
could feel a sort of patriotic pride. He was, moreover, 
an ardent patron of learning and art. Highly cul- 
tured himself, and eager to encourage every type of 
intellectual ability, he gathered round him a constella- 
tion of scholars and poets, architects and painters, 
whose reflected beams cast a radiance round his head. 
Among the eminent figures in that brilliant group was 
Marsilio Ficino, the head of the Platonic Academy, 
and an indefatigable student of Plato's writings, who 
signalised himself by his endeavours to reconcile the 
speculations of Greek philosophy with the doctrines of 
the Christian creed. Then there was Pico Mirandola, the 
master of many languages, and devourer of all know- 
ledge, whose versatile gifts and manifold acquirements 
made him a wonder to his contemporaries. A special 
favourite was Angelo Poliziano, the most accomplished 
scholar of his day, and a distinguished teacher, who 
drew about him pupils from the great cities of Italy 
and from the distant parts of Europe, and who was 
celebrated also for his elegant poetry and epigrammatic 
wit. There was also Luigi Pulci, the clever satirist, and 
author of the famous burlesque II Morgante Maggiore, 
in which the romances of mediaeval chivalry were 
parodied with remarkable skill, humour, and lively 
play of imaginative invention. Occasionally, also, a 
promising genius was taken into the palace, and kept 
and provided for there at the great patron's expense — 
a privilege which, it is interesting to note, the young 
Michael Angelo was actually enjoying at that very date. 



32 SAVONAROLA 

The presence at his court of such an array of shining 
talent, together with his sagacity as a statesman and 
his dexterous management of public affairs, encircled 
the name of Lorenzo the Magnificent with a lustre 
unequalled among the rulers of that age. 

But the spirit of faction and envy is not easily 
quelled, and some years before, in 1478, while 
Savonarola was still at Bologna, the life of Lorenzo 
had been seriously threatened by the notorious Pazzi 
conspiracy. The Pazzi were an influential family w^ho 
secretly plotted to undermine the Medici rule. They 
were joined in the plot by two powerful personages. 
Count Riario, a nephew of the Pope, and Archbishop 
Salviati of Pisa, and these acted the principal part in 
devising the assassination of Lorenzo. Pope Sixtus 
IV. was cognisant of the design, and expected from 
Lorenzo's downfall a substantial aggrandisement to his 
relatives, but he was careful to withhold any word or 
sign which might implicate him directly in the deed of 
murder by which the object of the plot was to be 
secured. The scene of the crime was the Cathedral of 
Florence, the agent a priest, the time the celebration of 
the Mass when the members of the Medici court were 
present, and the signal the elevation of the Host. The 
priest's hand faltered, and the dagger-thrust missed its 
mark. Lorenzo's brother Giuliano was slain; Lorenzo 
himself, drawing his sword, fought his way to the 
sacristy and escaped. 

That menace to the life and power of their prince 
rallied round him the sympathies of the people, and 
contributed to establish Lorenzo more securely in his 
absolute sway. There were many who resented in 
secret the curtailment of their privileges, and writhed 



FLORENCE, SAN MARCO, DE MEDICI 33 

under the veiled despotism in which they were held ; 
but the great body of the citizens contentedly accepted 
the despotism, spellbound by the glory and splendour 
of Lorenzo's state, and by the pleasure and prosperity 
that seemed to be associated with his rule. 

The splendour and prosperity were on the surface ; 
there was moral deterioration beneath. In architec- 
tural and sculptured adornment, intellectual activity, 
wide-awake interest in learning and culture, Florence 
stood pre-eminent among the cities of that age. There 
in all the different forms of art, the Renaissance had 
borne its richest fruit, as the unrivalled works of 
Giotto, Botticelli, Brunelleschi, Bartolommeo, Ghiberti, 
and many others, existed to show. There also in other 
directions the most brilliant powers of the human 
mind had reawakened to a singular degree of vigour 
and life. Florence had become a second Athens, but 
with the pagan spirit of Athens also reproduced. The 
Platonic Academy flourished; scholarship and philo- 
sophy were keenly pursued; yet the prevailing tone 
of society was dissolute and low—on every side luxury 
and extravagance, levity and voluptuousness, love of 
pleasure and greed of gain. And as for religion, 
although its ceremonies were formally, and on festival 
days ostentatiously, observed, its real life, its spiritual 
aspirations, were gone. The barren speculations of the 
pulpit and the too manifest worldliness and corruption 
of the leaders of the Church, had robbed it of all 
elevating power over the mass of the population 
Only in a few devout souls here and there did any 
living faith survive; and notwithstanding all its 
culture and beauty and restless energy, Florence was 
fast degenerating into a scene of glittering godlessness 



34 SAVONAROLA 

Lorenzo's example served to foster the demoralisation. 
The dissolute orgies in which he frequently indulged, 
and the ribald songs he composed for general use at 
the Carnival season, polished in style but coarse and 
obscene in sentiment, tended still further to encourage 
the debased tendencies of the popular mind. It was 
no uncommon occurrence for him, after a day spent 
in public business, and a few hours of discussion on 
high themes at the Platonic Academy, to sally forth at 
night into the city at the head of a band of revellers, 
to sing his " Canti Carnascialeschi," and to take part 
in vicious excesses. 

This serious moral degeneracy at work underneath 
the flashing material magnificence soon struck the eye 
and heart of Fra Girolamo, as he watched the vivid 
life of the city from his quiet retreat at San Marco. 
He had duties to discharge in the convent, however, 
which largely occupied his time and energies ; for here, 
as at Bologna, the training of the novices was en- 
trusted to his care, and he gave himself to the work 
with a self-devotion and power which in a brief space 
arrested attention. Coming before his students some- 
times in a sort of seraphic ecstasy, or sometimes with 
his eyes bathed in tears, he sought to stir their en- 
thusiasm in the study of the Scriptures, and woke in 
them towards himself an admiration which was strongly 
tinged with reverence. 

In a few months he was appointed to preach the 
Lenten sermons in the church of San Lorenzo; but 
this first attempt in the pulpit at Florence in 1482 
was an utter failure. He was burning with ardour to 
convert the world and renew the lives of men, but his 
precipitate manner, harsh voice, and awkward gestures 



FLORENCE, SAN MARCO, DE MEDICI 35 

were all against him. He was lacking in the graces of 
oratory ; his ideas were too fine and elevated for the 
popular taste ; and his denunciations of vice met with 
no sympathetic response. The audience fell away, 
until at the end of the course there were only twenty- 
five persons left to listen to him. At that time the 
pulpit-favourite of the Florentine public was Mariano 
da Gennazzano, a preaching monk of the Augustinian 
order, who delighted the votaries of the New Learn- 
ing by quotations from their much-vaunted classical 
authors, and whose musical voice, harmonious cadences, 
grand sentences, and rhetorical pauses, according to 
the description of Poliziano, had a captivating effect 
on the ear. Mariano was a distinguished specimen of 
the fashionable preachers of the day, skilful in suiting 
himself to the tastes of rank and culture, and lulling 
rather than rousing the consciences of men. In com- 
parison with such an orator, Savonarola, with his 
austere doctrine and clumsy delivery, was regarded as 
flat and tame. 

The failure was a severe disappointment; and so 
acutely was he pained by it, that, as one of his early 
biographers states, he resolved to renounce the work 
of preaching for ever. He retired to his duties of 
Bible instruction in the convent, and was thus quietly 
engaged when a summons came which furnished an 
opportunity of revealing his capacity and force of 
character in a way no longer possible to ignore. 



CHAPTER V 

The Leap into Fame 

The summons which called Fra Girolamo away from 
his quiet work among the novices at San Marco was 
a command from his superiors to attend a Chapter- 
General of the Lombard Dominicans to be held in the 
city of Reggio. This was a gathering at which not 
only a large number of distinguished ecclesiastics and 
theologians, but also many laymen of note in the world 
of letters, were assembled. It is not easy to discover 
with any clearness the part which Savonarola took 
in the proceedings of the Chapter ; all that can be 
definitely ascertained is, that by the appearances he 
made in its discussions the hitherto obscure monk of 
San Marco was lifted at once into notice as a man of 
unusual promise, certain to be heard of again. Among 
those present who were particularly impressed by the 
conspicuous ability he displayed, was the youthful 
Count Pico della Mirandola, already mentioned as one 
of the favourites at the Medici court. This gifted 
man, with his gracious bearing, fair and open counte- 
nance, and long golden hair waving down on his 
shoulders, excited admiration wherever he appeared. 
He had beauty and rank, fame and riches. He had 
visited the most renowned universities of France and 



THE LEAP INTO FAME 37 

Italy, and gathered knowledge from every source. 
His command of many tongues — Greek and Latin, 
Syriac, Hebrew, and Chaldee; his wide' acquaintance 
with philosophy and science, his marvellous memory 
and versatility of mind — had raised him to celebrity as 
a prodigy of learning. This brilliant genius was irre- 
sistibly attracted towards Savonarola, and the friendly 
interest thus awakened led the Count at a later date 
to use his influence with Lorenzo de Medici in bring- 
ing about the recall of the friar to Florence after an 
absence of several years. 

The Chapter-General at Reggio took place in 1482, 
and Savonarola returned from it to San Marco not 
only a marked man among the ecclesiastics of Lom- 
bardy, but a man in whose breast the conviction of a 
Divine mission was beginning to dawn. He took up 
once more his work among the novices; yet, as he 
looked out on the sins and follies of the city around 
him, and on the too patent scandals still rife in the 
Church, and as he brooded and prayed in his cell, he 
felt rising within the conviction of a great task, to 
which, by his growing sense of power and by the 
righteous fervour of his heart, he seemed to be called. 
There is truth in Lowell's words — 

"Souls destined to o'erleap the vulgar lot, 
And mould the world unto the scheme of God, 
Have a fore-consciousness of their high doom." 

And Savonarola had become aware of a secret pro- 
phetic instinct, pointing to some peculiar and sacred 
work for which he was marked out in the designs of 
the Most High. 

Strange visions came to him in his lonely vigils 



38 SAVONAROLA 

of contemplation and prayer. The calamities that 
threatened the Church passed before his gaze ; he 
hoard voices urging him to announce the coming perils 
and to rouse men to repentance and faith. It was two 
years, however, ere the way was opened for the delivery 
of his message. In 1484 he was sent to the town of 
San Gemiijnano, amono^ the hills of Siena, where a 
people as yet uncorrupted by the loose vices of the 
time lived, surrounded by beautiful churches, tall 
towers, and many monuments of mediaeval art. There 
for the first time he ventured to unfold his prophetic 
programme, and put forth the three propositions which 
w^ere to form the burden of his preaching all through 
life: — (1) that the Church will be scourged; (2) that 
it will afterwards be regenerated ; (3) that this will 
come to pass soon. These points he enforced by con- 
stant reference to Scripture, drawing particularly from 
the Old Testament startling illustrations of the Divine 
judgments which the evils of society and the abuses 
of religion must inevitably incur. 

Circumstances had transpired at Rome wdiich lent 
additional force to his conviction that some such judg- 
ment w^as near. Sixtus iv. had died, and it was 
notorious that Innocent viii., his successor, had owed 
his election to fraud and bribery. Instead of the 
Papal Court being cleansed, as many hoped it might 
be, the pollution had become worse than ever. The 
new Pope had sons of his own, whose advancement 
he schemed for with unblushing efFronter}^ while the 
ecclesiastics whom he drew around himself and raised 
to the chief dignities were a set of corrupt men whose 
vices were an open scandal ; and by such a pernicious 
example at the very centre of Christendom, encourage- 



THE LEAP INTO FAME 39 

ment was given to the already too profligate tendencies 
of the highly-placed and the wealthy throughout the 
country. 

With all this in view, Savonarola was possessed with 
the certainty of coming disaster, and he felt himself 
divinely impelled to declare it. The assurance of 
having a definite message gave point to his style and 
freedom to his utterance to a degree never experienced 
before. His hearers were visibly affected ; and in the 
consciousness of having wakened in other minds a thrill 
of sympathy with his own, he gained encouragement 
and strength. 

It was at Brescia, however, where he was appointed 
to preach in 1486, that the long-struggling passion and 
energy of his soul burst out with unmistakable force. 
The Apocalypse of John, which he chose as his subject, 
afforded ample scope for uttering the thoughts which 
had smouldered in his breast for years. The burning 
words which poured from him, denouncing sin and 
urging repentance, pierced men's consciences and shook 
them out of their stolid indifference. The crowd round 
his pulpit grew larger and larger ; and the people were 
awestruck when one day he described the four-and- 
twenty elders, and pictured one of them as rising up to 
declare the terrible doom which awaited Italy, and 
especially the city of Brescia, when blood would run in 
the streets, and fathers and mothers would see their 
children massacred before their eyes, and all would be 
slaughter and ruin — a prediction which was verified 
some years afterwards in the storming of the city by 
the French. The efiect of this startling picture and 
style of discourse was immensely heightened by the 
statement made by one of his companions, that the Fra 



40 SAVONAROLA 

Girolamo had stood in an ecstasy for five hours, with 
his face shining so as to illuminate the whole church 
where he was. 

The preaching was a failure no longer. Its prophet- 
like fervour and inspiration awoke an enthusiasm of 
admiration and wonder, and his fame spread. Savon- 
arola at last had found his power. He could use the 
pulpit as a vantage-ground from which to reach and 
move the hearts of men in the name of his Divine 
Lord and Master. All that he had now to wait for 
was a sphere sufficiently large and sufficiently central 
for the effective exercise of his gifts in stemming the 
tide of ungodliness. 

From Brescia, where he appears to have spent a 
considerable time, the authorities of his order directed 
him to pass on to other cities. It is impossible to trace 
his movements in detail, but for fully four years he 
was kept employed in various parts of Northern Italy. 
In several respects this preaching tour was of great 
value: it afforded him abundant practice in public 
speaking ; it gave him experience in dealing with men 
in the mass, and in handling religious questions in such 
a way as to appeal to the popular interest and intelli- 
gence ; and thus it helped him to acquire confidence in 
his own ability to render some real spiritual service to 
his generation. In the later stages of the tour we find 
him at Pavia, where, on the eve of leaving for Genoa, 
he wrote a letter to his mother, throbbing with the 
warm tenderness of a still unquenched natural affection, 
and at the same time revealing the consecrated spirit 
that animated him in his work. " Be assured," he said, 
" that I am more determined than ever to devote body 
and soul and all the knowledge which God has given 



THE LEAP INTO FAME 41 

me, for the love of Him, to the good of my neighbour ; 
and since I cannot do it at home, I will do it abroad." 
In the spirit thus expressed he was still labouring, when 
he received a message calling him back unexpectedly 
to his old place in the convent of San Marco. 



CHAPTER VI 
Florence again — The Mission Found, 

AND THE SpHEEE 

Count Pico della Mikandola had not lost his interest 
in the dark-faced friar whose mental power and high- 
toned utterances had produced a profound impression 
at the Chapter-General at Eeg-g-io ; and as the fame of 
the preaching in the northern cities became more pro- 
nounced, the scholarly noble was moved to urge his 
friend Lorenzo de Medici to secure the return of such 
a man as an ornament to his cit}". Lorenzo agreed to 
the proposal : the Prior of San Marco was apprised of 
his wish, and issued the order required. So, in 1489, 
Savonarola was recalled to Florence; and from that 
date he advanced with steady, rapid strides to all that 
was most marvellous and masterful as well as most 
pathetic in his career. 

In great weakness of body he took his weary journey 
on foot, until, utterly breaking down under the heat, 
he sank helpless by the roadside. There he was rescued 
by a stranger, who, according to the legendary embel- 
lishment of the story, after seeing to his recovery at 
the nearest inn and conducting him on his way as far 
as the San Gallo Gate, suddenly left him, with the 

42 



THE MISSION, AND THE SPHERE 43 

parting injunction, " Remember to do that for which 
God hath sent thee." 

He had indeed come back to Florence with a sense 
of his Heaven-given mission strong within him. When 
he left the city a few years before, it was with a pained 
disappointment at the failure of his efforts to touch the 
public conscience, or even to catch the public ear. Now, 
on his return, he was aware of expanding powers in 
himself and of high expectations in the minds of others 
regarding him. He was in his thirty-seventh year, in 
the prime of his age and of his intellectual strength ; 
and he came back amid the old scenes with all the 
prestige for sanctity and eloquence which his labours 
in the provinces had won. 

At first he went to work quietly at San Marco, and 
betook himself once more to the instruction of the 
novices. Gradually, however, the older monks gathered 
round in the room where he taught, to share the 
stimulus of his quickening thought and flashes of 
impassioned speech. Outsiders also were attracted — 
men of learning from the city, eager to hear the 
man who had so singularly emerged from obscurity 
into renown. In the summer of 1490, during a course 
of lectures on the Apocalypse, the numbers thus press- 
ing in were so large that it w^as found necessary to re- 
sort to the convent garden, where, day after day, under 
a tree of damask roses, and surrounded by the arched 
pillars of the square white cloister and the frescoes of 
Angelico, Fra Girolamo, with one hand grasping his 
book and the other stretched on high, addressed his 
strangely mixed audience, and poured out his soul on 
the great themes that possessed him. At length he 
was besieged by entreaties to mount the pulpit and 



44 SAVONAROLA 

make a more public appearance as a preacher ; and 
although he hesitated for a time, he ultimately announced 
that on the next Sunday he would speak in church 
and lecture, adding, as one of his earliest biographers 
asserts, " And I shall preach for eight years," — the very 
period over which his public ministry in Florence 
actually extended. 

Accordingly, on the 1st of August 1490, Fra 
Girolamo ascended the pulpit of the convent church of 
San Marco. There was a dense throng massed together 
in the not very spacious building. The excitement and 
curiosity were so keen that many were glad to obtain 
standing-room, anywhere, and even to cling to the 
railings, if only they might see the face and hear the 
voice of the preacher whom a few years before they 
had treated with chilling indifference. He went on 
with the exposition of the Apocalypse which he had 
begun in the convent garden ; and here again, as in his 
preaching tour in the north, he laboured to develop his 
three famous propositions, with a growing confidence 
and a kindling fire of earnestness which kept the crowd 
week after week aroused and riveted. It was ever 
the same message — the Church is corrupt unto its very 
core ; its central throne even is rotten ; Italy, the 
Paradise of earth, has become a spiritual wilderness, a 
land of idols and an abomination to the Lord ; the 
Church of Italy must be punished in order to be 
reformed. 

The interest awakened was not altogether favour- 
able. His hearers were divided. Some resented his 
sharp denunciations and reproofs ; some sneered at his 
gloomy prophecies of evil ; some treated his visions and 
revelations as either a hypocrisy or a delusion ; some 



THE MISSION, AND THE SPHERE 45 

had no sympathy with the lofty strain of feeling in 
which he indulged ; while some questioned his title to 
pose so authoritatively as the moral censor of the 
Church and of society. Yet there was one thing which 
all were compelled to recognise, and that was the blaze 
and sweep of his eloquence, which had in it no cunning 
tricks or studied arts, but burst forth ever and anon 
with a spontaneous rush that awed the listeners into 
breathless amazement. It was a style of preaching 
which had not been heard for many a day. Notwith- 
standing occasional intricacies of philosophical in- 
genuity and fanciful allegorising, it was characterised 
by a dash, a pungency, an incisive directness of phrase, 
under which it was possible for no audience to remain 
long unmoved. 

When the Lent of 1491 came round, Savonarola 
received a summons to deliver the course of sermons 
for the season in the Cathedral. The crowd followed 
him in vaster numbers than ever; and there, in that 
immense sombre building, so bare and yet so stately, 
with its " dim religious light " deepening the effect of 
its massive simplicity, the friar of San Marco became 
at once a dominant force in Florentine affairs, and 
began the work which has earned for him his peculiar 
place in history. For in gaining access to the 
Cathedral pulpit Savonarola had reached his throne. 
From that pulpit he was now about to establish a sway 
over Florence which would revive the waning cause of 
righteousness and liberty, and shake to its foundations 
the powerful rule of the Medici itself. The monk 
preaching in the Duomo was ere long to be the law- 
giver of the city, issuing his injunctions in the name 
of the Most High. To his own mind by this time his 



46 SAVONAROLA 

vocation had become thoroughly clear ; he was to work 
and speak for the reformation of morals in society, 
and for the revival of spiritual life and purity in the 
Church, x^nd here at last were both the sphere and 
the point of vantage most eminently adapted for the 
fulfilment of such a mission, — the sphere, the busy, 
cultured city which was the commercial and intellectual 
centre of Italy — and the point of vantage, his un- 
questioned command of the chief pulpit there. 

His sermons during that Lent season of 1491 struck 
the keynote of his few years' pulpit sovereignty. In 
bold, thrilling tones he launched forth against the 
frivolity, gambling, and impiety of the citizens, the 
pagan tastes and learned trifling of the devotees of the 
ancient philosophy, the vices and tyranny of those in 
power, the slavish subjection of the masses, and the 
bad lives of the clergy. He threw scorn on the light 
supplied by the pagan literature so extravagantly 
praised, and declared that the Scriptures are the only 
true guide for the soul. In opposition to the prevailing 
tendency to depend on external works and ceremonies, 
he maintained that salvation comes only through faith 
in Jesus Christ and the surrender of the heart to His 
grace. Here his teaching ran on much the same lines 
as those afterwards followed by Luther. It was, how- 
ever, a moral, not a doctrinal, reform which he set him- 
self specifically to labour for. He accepted the dogmatic 
beliefs of the Church, and, unlike Luther, felt no call 
to attack them. His one definite aim was to effect a 
practical purification of the Church and of the private 
and public life of the people. 

The anxiety to hear the new preacher in the Cathedral 
was universal, and sometimes the excitement rose to an 



THE MISSION, AND THE SPHERE 47 

extraordinary pitch. Men and women crowded round 
the doors in the early morning, and then thronged in 
and waited for hours till the preacher entered the 
pulpit, and held all eyes and ears intent. There he 
stood, — erect and easy in carriage, not tall, but well-knit 
and finely-strung in frame; his monk's cowl slightly 
drawn back over a broad forehead, deeply furrowed 
with wrinkles ; his sallow face, with its rugged features, 
aquiline nose, large mouth and thick, firm lips, all lit up 
by dark lustrous eyes which flashed and gleamed at 
times with strange fascinating power. His physical 
endowments were by no means attractive, yet when he 
looked round, with his sad, wistful smile, and raised his 
deep-toned, resonant voice, accompanied by a simple 
gesture of his long and almost transparent hands, the 
effect was irresistible. He spoke out boldly and freely, 
and as he warmed with his theme his whole counten- 
ance glowed. Sometimes his accent was stern, some- 
times tender and appealing ; and now and again, when 
enlarging on the Redeemer's suffering and love, he would 
seize the crucifix which lay by his side and kiss it. 

Yet while the crowd flocked to listen to him in the 
Cathedral, Savonarola was aware that his solemn 
predictions of woe, based, as he believed and avowed, 
on direct revelations of the Divine will, were exciting 
a large amount of contradiction. This exercised his 
mind severely, and led him to question whether he 
should not so far change his method and omit all 
reference to such subjects. That pause of hesitation, 
however, was forcibly rebuked in the Avay he after- 
wards described in his work, the Compendium 
Revelationum. " I remember that when I was 
preaching in the Duomo in the year 1491, after I 



48 SAVONAROLA 

had composed my sermon for the second Sunday in 
Lent entirely on those visions, I determined to suppress 
it, and never in the future to touch on these matters. 
But God is my witness how I watched and prayed the 
whole of Saturday and throughout the night, but 
could see no other course, no other doctrine. At day- 
break, weary and dejected by the long hours I had 
lain awake, I heard, as I prayed, a voice that said to 
me, ' Fool, dost thou not see that it is God's will that 
thou shouldst continue in the same path ? ' Where- 
fore I preached on the same day a terrible sermon." 

It is evident that the strong tinge of mystical 
enthusiasm which had early characterised him was 
beginning to colour in a marked degree the entire tone 
of Savonarola's thinking and of his public utterances. 
He dreamed himself back into the days of the old 
Hebrew prophets, fancying himself favoured by a 
special illumination like theirs. The pictures of the 
world's future and of things unseen on which he was 
prone to dwell, became transformed by his brooding 
imagination into vivid and present realities ; and they 
stood before his mind with such palpable clearness that 
he believed them to be veritable revelations from 
Heaven. This was a source of strength, and yet also a 
source of weakness. On the one hand, it sustained 
him in that assumption of prophetic authority which 
inspired his own confidence in his teaching, and made 
him feel that he was 

"The chosen trump wherethrough 
Our God sent forth awakening breath ;" 

and at the same time it mightily impressed the popular 
ear. On the other hand, it fostered a tendency to 



THE MISSION, AND THE SPHERE 49 

extravagance and exaggeration which was fraught 
with many dangers, and which indeed contributed 
largely to the mistakes — well-meant, but none the less 
serious — that brought his career to a disastrous end. 
He had inherited some of the superstitions of mediaeval 
piety, and this was one of them — a belief in direct 
visions and voices from the spiritual world. In this he 
was the child of the immediately preceding ages, and 
it was scarcely to be expected that he could be quite 
free from the influences which had moulded religious 
life and feeling for many generations down to his own. 
Still the massive force of his intellect preserved 
Savonarola from the worst excesses to which those 
mystical fervours might otherwise have led. Men of 
culture felt as they listened to him that they were 
in presence of a vigorous, clear-seeing, commanding 
mind. His impassioned oratory enthralled them, but 
his mental grasp compelled their respect. They could 
perceive that while he denounced the exorbitant value 
attached to classical studies and the teachings of ancient 
philosophy, he was himself thoroughly versed in the 
very learning which he held in such slight account. His 
preaching was full of bold and striking ingenuities, and 
behind it was a wealth of knowledge and fulness of 
intellectual culture that could not be concealed. But 
the Bible was his supreme book, the sole authority on 
matters of belief and conduct; and he expounded it 
with a daring and skill rarely if ever surpassed. In 
every image, parable, or figure, in every historical nar- 
rative even, he found not one, but many meanings — 
meanings heaped upon one another with lavish pro- 
fusion. He was rich in spiritual and allegorical inter- 
pretations. Here, again, Savonarola was, so far, the 
4 



50 SAVONAROLA 

child of his age, carrying with him the tendencies to 
intellectual subtlety and minute analysis derived from 
the scholastic and philosophical training under which 
he had been reared. Nevertheless, so intense was his 
moral earnestness and so great the native force of his 
character, that he rose conspicuously superior to the 
pedantry and intellectual affectations of his time. His 
mental activity was for ever asserting for itself a wider 
range. Again and again his genius burst the scholastic 
fetters, and struck out in freer, more natural methods 
of dealing with truth ; and it is only just to say that 
by his breadth of view in discussing great vital pro- 
blems, his fearless courage in facing facts and grappling 
with the realities of things, as well as by his thorough- 
going directness in bringing the force of reason and 
the teachings of Scripture to bear on the manifold 
questions and interests of human life, he communicated 
to his generation an impulse which was destined to 
prepare the way for the forward march of the world. 
He was, in fact, the pioneer of a new age — an age of 
fresher and larger thought, of higher aspiration and 
endeavour, of greater independence of intellectual and 
moral conviction — an age of progress, in which the 
pursuit of truth and the struggle for human well-being 
should be more than ever inspired by the passion for 
liberty and by a rational and practical spiritual faith. 
Having grown up, as he did, amid the vivid intellectual 
activity of the Renaissance, he infused into it, and 
blended with it, a force of moral energy and purpose 
not inherent in the Renaissance itself, which elevated 
its character, expanded its scope, and gave it a direc- 
tion calculated to sway and shape the advance of society 
at large. The one serious defect of the Renaissance 



THE MISSION, AND THE SPHERE 51 

was the absence of an uplifting moral ideal ; and it was 
the merit of Savonarola that he supplied that want. 
He planted right at the heart of the great literary re- 
vival an ideal and a pure moral enthusiasm fitted to 
lead it on to higher results, and to charge it with 
power to stir the nobler ambitions and instincts of 
human nature, and urge men forward in new paths of 
enterprise — intellectual, social, and religious. Thus 
he was the precursor, not so much of the Protestant 
Reformation itself, as of that wider, freer movement 
of the human spirit out of which the Protestant Refor- 
mation and many other changes have sprung — a 
herald of the dawn of our modern civilisation. 



CHAPTER VII 

The Monk and the Magnifico 

Notwithstanding the irritation excited in some quar- 
ters by his first Lent sermons in the Duomo, Savonarola's 
power and success were so undoubted that he was in- 
vited to preach before the Signory — the body of chief 
magistrates — in the Palazzo Yecchio, on one of the days 
in Easter Week. He felt himself rather embarrassed 
in addressing so specially select an audience, and under 
the necessity of being more polite in his utterances, 
" like Christ," as he said, " in the house of the Pharisee." 
Yet he contrived to speak some pointed words on the 
duties of rulers. He condemned the tyranny which 
made heavy exactions and loved flattery, and pro- 
nounced the prince to be responsible for the evil in 
his city. 

Some of his remarks were construed into significant 
allusions to Lorenzo de Medici, and it was alleged that 
Lorenzo, on hearing of the sermon, had taken oflence. 
It was even asserted that the displeasure felt at Court 
would lead to the preacher's expulsion from Florence. 
We find a reference to those rumours in a letter written 
to his warmly attached friend, Era Domenico da Pescia, 
one of the San Marco brothers, who was away on a 
preaching mission. Calling to mind the case of a well- 



THE MONK AND THE MAGNH^ICO 53 

known monk who had been sent into exile a few years 
before for his vehement testimony against usury, 
Savonarola said, " Many have feared, and still fear, 
that that will be done to me which was done to Fra 
Bernardino." Lorenzo, however, gave no manifest 
sign of disapprobation, and, whatever the leading men 
around him may have suggested, he declined as yet to 
interfere. 

Meanwhile the impression of Savonarola's ability 
and genius was growing, and in July of that same 
year, 1491, he was elected by his brother-monks as the 
Prior of San Marco. As the convent had been rebuilt 
and enriched by the house of Medici, it had been the 
custom for the new Prior on his appointment to repair 
to the Medici palace and render some sort of homage 
to the reigning head of the family. Savonarola was 
expected to conform to that custom, but showed no 
inclination to do so. The older friars became uneasy, 
and, hurrying to his cell, remonstrated with him on 
the omission of what seemed to them an important 
duty. " Who named me to be Prior — God or Lorenzo ? " 
he asked. " God," was the answer. " Then," said he, 
" to Him alone will I give thanks, and not to mortal 
man." Lorenzo, when told of this speech, merely re- 
marked, "A stranger has taken up his abode in my 
house, and will not deign to pay me a visit." The 
Magnifico was apparently struck with the lofty inde- 
pendence of a man of whose exceptional gifts he was 
already aware, and his curiosity was awakened to 
know him better. Honouring every form of talent, 
and eager to draw all that was distinguished and re- 
markable within his own circle, he made many efforts 
to conciliate and attract the brilliant preacher. If 



54 SAVONAROLA 

Savonarola would not come to him, he would go to 
Savonarola. He went repeatedly to San Marco, to 
hear Mass in the church, and afterwards walked in the 
convent garden. Savonarola, shut up in his cell, en- 
gaged in his studies, left him unheeded. The ^ monks 
came anxiously to tell him the news, " Lorenzo is in 
the garden." " Has he asked for me ? " was the inquiry. 
" No." " Then," said the Prior, turning to his desk 
again, " if he does not ask for me, let him go or stay as 
he will." 

It would appear that from the first Savonarola was 
conscious of a fundamental antagonism between him- 
self and the illustrious Prince at the head of the State. 
He cannot have failed to recognise the uncommon skill 
and resourceful ability of Lorenzo ; yet it is not quite 
clear that he had an adequate comprehension of 
Lorenzo's large and varied power, his splendid intel- 
lectual capacity, the elements of real genius which had 
won for him his wide and brilliant renown. Though 
studiously avoiding any direct exhibition of hostility, 
nevertheless, there is reason to believe, he regarded 
Lorenzo as a type of that repressive despotism against 
which his whole soul was in revolt ; and also as an 
embodiment of that bewitching but morally pernicious 
pagan spirit which all the purest instincts of his 
nature impelled him to combat and arrest. Hence 
the rigid austerity of his demeanour in rejecting the 
courtesies of one whom he regarded as the corrupter 
of the people's morals and the destroyer of their 
freedom. Whether he might not ultimately have 
gained an influence for good over Lorenzo's mind by 
a manner more gracious, is open to question. But 
feeling constrained to set himself against the entire 



THE MONK AND THE MAGNIFICO 55 

system of things identified with what he believed to 
be Lorenzo's unjust and demoralising rule, he was 
resolved to keep clear of any embarrassments arising 
from the great man's patronage or friendship. Lorenzo, 
on his part, was not readily discouraged in his con- 
ciliatory advances. He sent rich presents to the 
convent, and on one occasion dropped a number of 
gold pieces into the alms-box. When the box was 
opened, the Prior, convinced that they had been placed 
there by Lorenzo, laid them aside, and sent them to 
the Guild of the Good Men of San Martino, to be 
distributed among the poor, saying, as he did so, 
" The silver and copper are enough for us." He 
was not going to allow himself to be compromised in 
his work for God by any seduction of bribes and 
gifts; for, as he remarked in his sermon a few days 
^ater, a faithful dog does not cease barking in his 
master's defence because a bone has been thrown to 
him. 

Baffled once more, Lorenzo began to take alarm. 
He had hitherto shown a wonderful patience and 
magnanimity, but at last he realised the indomitable 
temper of the preacher, whose influence threatened his 
prestige and power. The step he next took to win 
him into complaisance was to send a deputation of 
five influential citizens — Domenico Bonsi, Guid' An- 
tonio Vespucci, Paolo Soderini, Francesco Valori, and 
Bernardo Rucellai — on a special visit to San Marco. 
They came as if by their own prompting, to urge 
Savonarola to moderate his tone and take up a less 
severe attitude in denouncing abuses ; and they dropped 
ominous hints as to the risk of banishment if he 
should continue his sweeping charges against the 



56 SAVONAROLA 

existing order of affairs in the city. The composed 
and resolute bearing with which Savonarola met the 
deputation rather disconcerted them in delivering their 
message. For a message it was, as he at once divined. 
They were acting at the bidding of another, he plainly 
told them, and not of their own accord ; it was Lorenzo 
who had sent them, and Lorenzo should be enjoined 
to repent of his sins, " for the Lord spares no one, and 
fears not the princes of the earth." And as for the 
threat of banishment, he said, " I fear not sentences 
of banishment; for this city of yours is but a grain 
of lentil in the earth. Nevertheless, though I am a 
stranger, and Lorenzo a citizen and the first in the 
city, I shall stay where I am, and it is he that will 
depart." Savonarola was deeply moved by this visit 
and its evident design to terrorise him into the sup- 
pression of his convictions ; it confirmed him in his 
determination to maintain his independence at what- 
ever cost. He had a strong assurance that the con- 
dition of Florence and Italy was about to undergo a 
change, and he went so far as to predict, in the 
presence of many witnesses, that the Magnifico him- 
self, the Pope, and the King of Naples were all soon 
to come to their end. 

Lorenzo, mortified by the unmistakable repulse he 
had received, now resolved to use more decided mea- 
sures for the subversion of an influence which, he felt, 
there was serious reason to fear. Fra Mariano da 
Gennazzano, the polished rhetorician, by whose popu- 
larity Savonarola's first pulpit efforts were eclipsed, 
had for some time retired into comparative silence. 
From the seclusion of the convent of San Gallo, which 
Lorenzo had built for him, he was called by the 



THE MONK AND THE MAGNIFICO 57 

Magnifico to resume his preaching and to confute the 
prophetic pretensions of the rival who had supplanted 
him in the Florentine mind. He appeared in the pulpit 
of San Gallo, and discoursed on the text, " It is not 
given to you to know the times and the seasons which 
the Father hath put in His own power." The audience 
was large and eagerly expectant. Lorenzo was present, 
along with a numerous company of his literary friends 
and many of the magnates of the city. But, for the 
object intended, the result was a failure. Fra Mariano, 
by his heat of temper and excessive coarseness of 
vituperation, overshot the mark. His admirers were 
shocked, and some of them openly turned and became 
followers of Savonarola, while to Lorenzo himself the 
sermon was altogether disappointing, and henceforth 
he left the Prior of San Marco undisturbed. 

Savonarola replied on the following Sunday to 
Mariano's attack, preaching on the same text, and 
defending himself with vigour against the charges of 
extravagance and presumption levelled at him in 
Mariano's discourse. Ere long, however, some sort of 
reconciliation was effected between the two preachers, 
and at the invitation of Mariano they joined in cele- 
brating Mass together in the church of San Gallo. 
Mariano soon after received an appointment at Rome, 
where at a later date, as we shall find, he again made 
himself conspicuous by ill-designed eiforts to malign 
and injure his old rival when beset by gathering- 
troubles, and with darkness and with dangers com- 
passed round. 

Savonarola's supremacy in the pulpit of Florence 
was now undisputed. Lorenzo, despite the defeat of 
his attempts to win over or to subdue him, displayed 



58 SAVONAROLA 

a large measure of tolerance, and allowed him to 
strengthen his hold on the popular regard. In a few 
months, however, the distinguished Prince was struck 
down by a disease which baffled human skill. It was 
in the spring of 1492, and Lorenzo the Magnificent, as 
yet only forty-four years of age, in the prime of life 
and the height of his power, lay in his beautiful villa 
at Careggi, among the olive-gardens, pronounced by 
the doctors to be near his end. Then Savonarola was 
surprised by a summons to attend the deathbed of 
the great man. Lorenzo had sent for him, because, 
according to one account, he wished to die in charity 
with all men ; or because, according to another account, 
he was racked by remorse for past misdeeds, and al- 
though Holy Communion had been administered by 
one of the priests, he yet desired absolution at the 
hands of one whom he declared to be the only honest 
" religious " whom he knew, and who acted up to his 
profession. Savonarola duly appeared. The friar and 
the Magnifico had never met before. What happened 
at the interview it is difficult precisely to ascertain. 
In the version of the story given by Pico della Miran- 
dola, nephew of the versatile scholar of the same 
name, and also by Burlamacchi, it is stated that 
when Savonarola came into the dying man's presence, 
Lorenzo mentioned that he had three special sins to 
confess — the sack of Yolterra, the plunder of the 
Monte delle Fanciulle (an institution founded for the 
dowry of Florentine maidens who had been deprived 
of their marriage portions), and the slaughter of 
Florentine citizens after the Pazzi conspiracy. Savon- 
arola consoled him during these confessions by re- 
peating, " God is merciful ; God is merciful ; " and 



THE MONK AND THE MAGNIFICO 59 

then, when Lorenzo had finished, he demanded of him 
three things before absolution could be given. First, 
that he should have a living faith in God's mercy. 
Lorenzo replied that he had such a faith. Second, 
that he should restore what he had unjustly acquired, 
and charge his sons to make restitution. Lorenzo, 
after hesitating a moment, signified his assent. Then 
came the third stipulation. Savonarola drew himself 
up to his full height, and said, "Give Florence back 
her liberties." Lorenzo turned his face to the wall 
and uttered not a word, and Savonarola left the room 
without granting the absolution desired. 

There is considerable ground to suspect that in 
describing this interview the biographers of Savon- 
arola, writing some years after his death, may have 
been moved by their enthusiastic admiration for their 
hero to give an exaggerated colouring to the actual 
facts. It is hardly to be supposed that one in the 
position and with the character of Savonarola would 
violate the oath of secrecy with regard to a deathbed 
confession. It is indeed doubtful whether Lorenzo, 
in sending for him, had in view any such confession 
at all. He had already confessed to the priest who 
administered to him the Holy Communion, and there 
are difficulties in the way of supposing that he wished 
to make another confession. The account given by 
Poliziano, Lorenzo's favourite Court-companion, is less 
dramatic, but in many respects more probable. It 
was written in a letter only a few weeks after the 
event. According to Poliziano, Savonarola came not 
to hear a confession, but to address some friendly 
counsels to the dying man. He admonished him to 
hold firmly to the faith, which Lorenzo avowed that 



6o SAVONAROLA 

ho did. He exhorted him to amend his life if he 
should recover, and that he promised diligently to do. 
Finally, he urged him to meet death, if it came, with 
resignation, and the reply was, " Nothing would please 
me better, should it be God's will." Savonarola then 
prepared to depart. " Give me your blessing, father, 
before you go," Lorenzo asked ; whereupon Savonarola 
recited the prayers for the dying, in which Lorenzo 
with bowed head and pious responses earnestly joined. 
This description of the occurrence, wdiich is simple 
and natural, presents Savonarola in a less harsh and 
irreconcilable aspect than the other ; at the same time 
it brings into view, with an air of truthfulness, some 
of the better qualities which still undoubtedly lingered 
in Lorenzo's strangely complex and richly endowed 
nature. 

So the two notable men met and parted. The monk 
went away to his convent and to his work in the 
pulpit, which was every month widening before him ; 
the Magnitico rapidly sank, and died on the 8th of 
April 1492, " leaving, as such men do, the deluge 
after him." 



CHAPTER VIII 
Changes and Prophecies of Change 

On the death of Lorenzo de Medici his son Piero came 
into power. He was gallant and comely in person, 
a keen athlete, delighting in riding, wrestling, tennis, 
and other exercises of physical skill ; yet, though 
possessed of considerable mental ability, the new ruler 
of Florence lacked the qualities essential to the wise 
management of men. He had all the ambition which 
characterised Cosimo and Lorenzo, but was entirely 
destitute of the tact and statesmanlike shrewdness 
which had lifted them to success, while his rudeness 
of manner, haughty spirit, and violent outbursts of 
temper were a constant cause of offence. Under his 
leadership Florence soon lost its proud pre-eminence and 
its balancing influence in Italian affairs. In the govern- 
ment of the city itself his failure was equally marked. 
Lorenzo had been scrupulously careful to preserve the 
form and semblance of liberty, even though depriving 
the people of its reality ; Piero had no patience with 
such a policy, and even the form of liberty he rashly 
proceeded to destroy. Instead of flattering the popular 
mind by keeping up the appearance of being the first 
citizen of the State, and therefore one with the Floren- 
tines themselves, as his father and Cosimo had done, 

61 



62 SAVONAROLA 

he determined to play the role of absolute prince, and 
to brook no restraint in the use of his power. A wide- 
spread disaffection was thus created. Many leading 
men, who had willingly followed Lorenzo, now fell 
away from his son, and a party continually in- 
creasing in numbers and strength was formed against 
him. 

Meanwhile the voice of Savonarola was still pleading 
for righteousness, purity, and the fear of God, and 
more and more the discontented class in the city 
gathered round his pulpit. He displayed no special 
antagonism to Piero's rule; nevertheless, without his 
intending it, probably without his being conscious 
of it, he came to be regarded, if not as the head, 
yet as the heart of the disaffection, since the principles 
which he proclaimed with passionate earnestness were 
so clearly in favour of justice and liberty. That 
Savonarola was himself profoundly stirred by the 
prevailing feeling of unrest, may be seen from the 
strange visions which at this time flashed before his 
mind. On Good Friday, a fortnight after Lorenzo's 
death, he beheld, as he afterwards described, a black 
cross, which rose from the midst of the city of Rome 
and reached the sky, bearing on it the inscription, 
Crux Irae Dei (the Cross of God's Wrath); and on 
its appearance the clouds gathered, the sky darkened, 
lightning and thunder, wind and hail burst forth in 
fury, and multitudes of men were slain. Then the 
scene changed ; the sky cleared, and from the midst, 
not of Rome, but Jerusalem, he saw another cross, 
so brilliant and glorious that all the world was 
illumined by it, and flowers sprang up, and joy 
awoke on every hand. It bore the legend, Crux 



CHANGES AND PROPHECIES 63 

MisericordioB Dei (the Cross of God's Mercy), and all 
the nations flocked to adore it. Such a vision in- 
dicated the suspense, and the expectation of an im- 
pending crisis, which Savonarola shared with the 
general mind. 

The first change which broke the suspense was the 
death of the Pope, the lax and incompetent Innocent 
VIII. Here was a second instance of the fulfilment 
of those prophecies reported to have been uttered 
by Savonarola in the sacristy of San Marco in the 
previous year. First Lorenzo, and then the Pope, 
whom he had declared to be near their end, were 
now gone. 

All Italy was eagerly intent on the election of 
Innocent's successor. During the night between the 
10th and 11th of August 1492, the Conclave of Car- 
dinals, assembled at the Vatican, chose the notorious 
Roderigo Borgia, a Spaniard by birth, to fill the 
vacant chair. The result was due to the rankest 
bribery. Vast sums of gold were freely used in 
Borgia's favour, and some of the cardinals received 
a heavy price for their vote. Borgia's character was 
flagrantly impure. While fascinating in address, 
genial in disposition, and singularly expert in the 
conduct of affairs, he was a prelate whose life was 
immoral and licentious to a deplorable degree, and 
whose breaches of the vow of chastity were distinctly 
and widely known. In the appointment of such a 
man to the highest dignity in the Church, and in 
the general gratification with which his election was 
hailed throughout the land, we have a striking evidence 
of the laxity of moral feeling which formed a marked 
feature of the times. Dissolute and corrupt as the 



64 SAVONAROLA 

Papal Court had been before, under Sixtus iv. and 
Innocent viii., it now became more than ever a centre 
of demoralisation ; and when the new Pope was pro- 
claimed under the title of Alexander vi., all hope 
for the regeneration of religion and of the Church 
seemed to be shattered. For a while at first 
appearances promised a strong and determined 
rule, but events gradually proved that it was to 
be strong and determined not in the interests of 
religion, but only in the interests of the Pope him- 
self, and of his rapacious, violent, and unscrupulous 
family. 

To Savonarola in Florence, with eye ever fixed on 
the movements of the ecclesiastical world, the elevation 
to the pontificate of a prelate of Alexander vi.'s power- 
ful yet darkly blemished character was a painful dis- 
appointment ; and when he thought of the bribery 
and intrigue by which that elevation had been secured, 
and saw after a time how affairs were tending, his 
mind was filled with the gloomiest forebodings. He 
looked for nothing but woe and disaster. The sombre 
picture which his imagination drew of the immediate 
future was so definite and real, that he accepted it 
as a revelation from heaven. He saw it all as an 
inspired vision. On the night preceding the last of 
his Advent sermons in 1492, he beheld in the heavens 
a hand grasping a sword, on which were inscribed 
the words, Gladius Domini super terraiin cito et 
volociter (the Sword of the Lord upon the earth soon 
and speedily). He heard voices pledging grace to 
the penitent, threatening stripes and vengeance on 
the wicked, and calling upon himself to urge men to 
reverence the Almighty, and also to pray that God 



CHANGES AND PROPHECIES 65 

should send good shepherds to His Church, that the 
flock might be fed and saved. 

That Savonarola believed in these visions as verit- 
able communications from the unseen, it is impossible 
to doubt. His mind conceived things with such vivid 
intensity, that his thoughts assumed a concrete shape 
and colour which imparted to them an authority in 
his view nothing less than Divine. He placed the 
same measure of reliance on his prophecies and pre- 
dictions of the future. These were, probably, but 
the sagacious forecasts which his skilful reading of 
events had led him to form, yet in a high-strung 
temperament like his, they were converted into 
divinely-sent glimpses into the secrets of Providence, 
which he was commissioned to make known to men. 
There is no sound reason for charging him as a mere 
pretender to the gifts of the prophet and the seer, 
for the sake of sensational impressiveness and popular 
effect. His sincerity of spirit was sufficiently proved 
to clear his character from any suspicion of wilful 
deception. It is quite obvious, however, that he 
exaggerated both the value and the authority of his 
prophecies and visions. For the most part they came 
to him in times of social and political agitation, and 
therefore they were attended with a state of excite- 
ment in his own feelings which led him to place 
undue confidence in their Divine inspiration. The 
fact also that in repeated instances they approached 
so wonderfully near the' truth, was itself a snare by 
which his mind was beguiled. No doubt, those visions 
and prophecies gave him a certain arresting power 
in addressing the people; they imparted an added 
force to the nerve-thrilling and often spirit-quickening 
5 



66 SAVONAROLA 

words which poured forth from his strong and fervent 
soul ; still, it must be admitted, they tempted him into 
occasional excesses of zeal, and into misguided attitudes 
and utterances, which ultimately had the effect of 
embarrassing his reforming work and bringing about 
his sad and premature end. 

Visions and prophecies entered largely into the sub- 
stance of Savonarola's sermons in the months imme- 
diately following Alexander vi.'s accession to the Papal 
throne, and Florence was stirred by his ominous fore- 
shadowings of coming judgment. Suddenly, however, 
in the spring of 1493, it was found that Savonarola 
had left the city and was preaching at Bologna. 
According to Yillari, his departure was due to the 
intervention of Piero de Medici, who, through fear of 
the influence of the distinguished preacher round 
whom his own enemies were now rallying, instigated 
the authorities of the Dominican Order to command 
his removal. Dr. Creighton throws doubt on the 
existence of any such feeling on Piero's part, and 
argues that if Savonarola had been regarded as an 
enemy it is inconceivable that Piero should have 
helped him, as he afterwards did, to procure the 
Papal Bull which made the Florentine Dominicans 
independent of the Lombard Congregation. The real 
explanation of the absence it is not easy to discover ; 
but the absence itself was a vexation to the Floren- 
tines, and especially trying to the monks of San 
Marco, who sadly missed the guidance and inspiring 
fellowship of their beloved Fra Girolamo. His work 
at Bologna was not altogether encouraging. He 
preached the Lenten course of sermons there, but 
felt as if in an atmosphere of restraint, and this so 



CHANGES AND PROPHECIES 67 

tamed his manner as to call forth the common criti- 
cism that he was but "a simple man, and a good 
enough preacher for women." Gradually, however, his 
audience increased, and people of all ranks — artisans, 
peasants, burghers, men and women of note — were 
attracted by the reputation of his name. The haughty 
wife of Giovanni Bentivoglio, the despotic lord of 
Bologna, was one of his regular hearers, but she 
came habitually late, and with a pompous train of 
attendants, interrupting the devotions of the congre- 
gation and the discourse of the preacher. At first 
Savonarola endeavoured to shame her by pausing in 
his sermon till she and her retinue were settled in 
their seats, but finding that the annoyance was re- 
peated, he addressed an admonition to ladies in general 
as to the duty of arriving in time and not disturbing 
the worship. Even this had no efiect ; and at last, one 
day, when the interruption was particularly distract- 
ing, Savonarola was roused, and cried out, "Behold, 
here comes the devil to disturb the word of God." In 
her rage at such a public affront to her pride, the 
great lady ordered two of her cavaliers to strike her 
reprover dead there and then in the pulpit. They 
had not the courage to attempt the task. She sent 
two others to attack him in the convent of San 
Domenico, but when admitted into his presence they 
were subdued by his gentle yet dignified bearing, and 
crept away abashed. Notwithstanding this patent 
risk to his life, he remained in the city till the Lent 
season closed, and then in his last sermon he made the 
public announcement, evidently in defiance of the hos- 
tile design to which he knew himself exposed : " This 
afternoon I will take the road to Florence, with my 



68 SAVONAROLA 

slender staff and my wooden flask, and I will repose at 
Pianora. If any person want aught of me, let him 
come before I set out ; " and then he added, with signi- 
ficant emphasis, "Nevertheless, it is not my fate to 
die at Bologna." 



CHAPTEK IX 

Preparing for the Flood 

The first task to which Savonarola set himself on 
returning from Bologna was the reform of his own 
monastery. This was an object which he had been 
contemplating for some time, as a preparation for any 
wider reform to which Providence might open the 
way. He saw clearly that if a thorough improve- 
ment in the religious condition of the Church was 
to be reached, the work must begin amongst the 
monks and the priests, and he decided therefore to 
make a start by setting his own household in 
order. 

As an initial step, however, he found it necessary 
to procure for himself and his convent a more inde- 
pendent position. San Marco and the other Domini- 
can brotherhoods associated with it in Tuscany were 
under the jurisdiction of the Congregation of Lom- 
bardy, and Savonarola, as Prior of San Marco, was 
subject to the commands of the Vicar of that Congre- 
gation. Accordingly, with a view to obtain greater 
freedom in his reforming efforts, he made application to 
Eome for the separation of the Tuscan Congregation 
from that of Lombardy ; and in this he was supported 
not only by his own brethren, but by the Signory of 



70 SAVONAROLA 

Florence and by Piero de Medici himself. The in- 
fluential Cardinal Caraffa of Naples was also on his 
side. The chief opponents of the scheme were the 
heads of the Lombard convents, Ludovico Sforza of 
Milan, and Pope Alexander VI. Piero de Medici's 
assistance may be explained partly by a desire to 
show hostility to Ludovico Sforza, and partly by his 
expectation that the independence of the Tuscan 
monasteries, and especially of San Marco, would add 
to the dignity of Florence. In face of the Pope's dis- 
favour the case seemed hopeless, but a Brief ordaining 
the separation was obtained by a bold and clever 
manoeuvre. The subject was discussed at a Consistory 
held at Rome on 22nd May 1493, when Alexander, 
losing patience, abruptly closed the assembly, declaring 
that he would sign no Brief that day. Cardinal CarafFa 
remained behind, and in playful conversation with the 
Pope drew the signet-ring from his finger, sealed the 
document, which had been already prepared, with the 
full stamp of Papal authority, and then carried it off 
in triumph, just a few minutes before a deputation 
representing the opposing party arrived to find that 
the deed against which they wished to protest had 
been done, and could not be recalled. The effect of 
this Brief was to give to Savonarola a liberty of 
action which he had not hitherto possessed. He was 
re-elected Prior of San Marco, and was afterwards 
appointed Vicar-General of the Tuscan Congregation, 
becoming thereby independent of all ecclesiastical 
authority save that of the Pope and the Father- 
Gei^v^iTal of the Dominican Order. 

The free position thus gained, Savonarola at once 
proceeded to use in the reform of San Marco. His 



PREPARING FOR THE FLOOD 71 

first work was to restore the original rule of the 
founder. San Domenico's last words to his disciples 
had been, " Have charity, preserve humility, observe 
voluntary poverty ; may my malediction and that of 
God fall upon him that shall bring possessions to 
this order." The possessions which the convent had 
acquired, in disregard of those injunctions, were now 
renounced. All fine clothing, ornaments, and expen- 
sive furniture were forbidden. Longer hours of 
prayer, fasting, and penitential mortification were 
introduced, Savonarola himself being as rigorous as 
any in the practice of these austerities. The two^ 
cells which he occupied at the end of the long corridor 
on the upper floor were barely furnished, and very 
small, each being only four paces square, with one 
window about two feet in height and rounded at the: 
top. One was his sleeping apartment, the other his 
study. In the first cell the visitor sees to-day some 
of the relics of the great Prior's devoutly simple and 
self-denying life — his rosary, wooden crucifix, cloak, 
under-garment, and hair-shirt ; and also a reminder of 
his pathetic end — a fragment of the stake at which 
he suffered. 

Moreover, it was arranged that if the alms collected 
from friends outside were not sufficient, the needs of 
the brotherhood were to be met by the manual labour 
of those whose tastes and abilities did not qualify 
them for intellectual studies or peculiarly spiritual 
work. The result of this arrangement was that San 
Marco became a home of artistic industry, where paint- 
ing, sculpture, architecture, wood-carving, and manu- 
script-illumination were busily pursued. As for the 
special studies carried on, these were divided into three 



72 SAVONAROLA 

branches — dogmatic theology, philosophy and moral 
science, and Holy Scripture; and in order that the 
, work of the last-named department might be followed 
^out to greater profit, Savonarola took care to provide 
for the teaching not only of Greek, but of the Hebrew, 
Syriac, and Chaldee tongues. 

The prestige of San Marco was distinctly enhanced 
under so lofty -purposed and large-minded a regime. 
Difficulties, indeed, arose; criticism and hostility had 
to be encountered ; but soon a higher earnestness was 
awakened, and the impression produced in Florence 
was such as to attract ever-increasing numbers of 
citizens, some of them men of noble birth, to join the 
brotherhood. The convent became the centre of a 
revived religious enthusiasm, and the fresh, purifying 
influence was felt in other communities of the Domini- 
can Order throughout Tuscany. 

Savonarola's relations with his own monks and with 
the visitors who frequented the convent were of the 
most cordial and friendly character. The natural 
gravity of his disposition was softened by a gentle 
graciousness, which seldom failed to beget a warm 
affection in those closely associated with him. He 
could unbend from his usual austerity of mien, and 
enter with genial freedom into the pleasantries and 
pastimes of the brethren in their hours of relaxation. 
Occasionally' he would take them out for a day's 
excursion into the country, choosing some secluded 
spot where they could enjoy the beauties of nature 
undisturbed ; and there he would freely join with them 
in their simple repast under a shady tree, read to 
them, sino- with them, and look on with frank and 
easy good-humour at the sports in which the novices 



PREPARING FOR THE FLOOD 73 

sought vent for their youthful spirits and energies ; 
endearing himself to them all by his winning brother- 
liness and humanity. 

He was, moreover, the trusted counsellor to whom 
citizens of all ranks turned for guidance in their per- 
plexities. Inquirers came to him with their doubts ; 
care-laden men and women sought his consolation in 
their troubles; the erring and penitent repaired to 
him with the burdens that lay upon their conscience ; 
and he received them, one and all, with a sweet be- 
nignity and a firm yet gentle faithfulness of treatment 
which sent them away strengthened and comforted. 
He had a tender heart, with a deep fountain of sym- j 
pathy in it, notwithstanding his apparent severity. --^ 

His usefulness at this time was extended in its 
range by the devotional publications which he had 
begun to issue. His tractates on Humility, Prayer, 
the Love of Jesus Christ, and the Widowed Life were 
widely used as religious handbooks, and enabled him 
to reach and influence a larger audience than that 
which had been enthralled by his ministrations in the 
Cathedral. These works had a fine saintly flavour, a 
mystic elevation of thought, and a rich spiritual 
wisdom, which afforded nourishment to thousands of 
earnest, aspiring minds not only in Florence but in far 
distant cities. 

For months now Savonarola's voice had not been 
heard in public, but towards the end of this year, 1493, 
he appeared again in the Duomo pulpit, and preached 
the sermons for the Advent season to congregations 
that listened with rapt and reverent emotion. His \ 
strong personality and impassioned earnestness, his ; 
lofty integrity and purity of life, against which the / 



74 SAVONAROLA 

slightest whisper of suspicion had never been breathed, 
were steadily raising him in the esteem of the com- 
munity, while the growing belief in his predictions 
and warnings intensified the popular interest in his 
preaching. With the 73rd Psalm for his subject, he 
dwelt specially on the corruptions of the clergy and 
the vices of the princes of Ital}^ The clergy, he 
said, "tickle men's ears with talk of Aristotle and 
Plato, Virgil and Petrarch, and take no concern in the 
salvation of souls. . . . They speak against pride and 
ambition, yet are plunged in both up to the eyes ; 
they preach chastity, and maintain concubines ; they 
prescribe fasting, and feast splendidly themselves." 

He had strong words of reproof for the dignitaries 
of the Church, and in a classical passage, which is 
here quoted from the English translation of Professor 
'^Villari's work, he held them up to withering scorn. 
" There thou seest the great prelates with splendid 
mitres of gold and precious stones on their heads, and 
silver crosiers in hand ; there they stand at the altar, 
decked with fine copes and stoles of brocade, chanting 
those beautiful vespers and masses, very slowly, and 
with so many grand ceremonies, so many organs and 
choristers, that thou art struck with amazement. . . . 
Men feed upon these vanities and rejoice in these 
pomps, and say that the Church of Christ was never 
so flourishing, nor divine worship so well conducted as 
at present . . . likewise that the first prelates were 
inferior to these of our own times. The former, it is 
true, had fewer gold mitres and fewer chalices, for, 
indeed, what few they possessed were broken up to 
relieve the needs of the poor; whereas our prelates 
for the sake of obtaining chalices, will rob the poor of 



PREPARING FOR THE FLOOD 75 

their sole means of support. But dost thou know 
what I would tell thee ? In the primitive Church the 
chalices were of wood, the prelates of gold ; in these \ 
days the Church hath chalices of gold and prelates of/ 
wood." 

Equally severe were the rebukes which he levelled 
at the political rulers of the land, the petty but osten- 
tatious sovereigns who held sway over the numerous 
principalities into which Italy was then divided. They 
made their courts and palaces a refuge for the wanton 
and the unworthy. They showed favour to flattering 
philosophers and poets, who pandered to their vanity 
by lies and fables. And he struck a note of passionate 
sympathy with liberty by denouncing those luxurious 
princes for the readiness with which, under the in- 
fluence of false counsellors, they devised new burdens 
and taxes to drain the blood of the people. The 
righteous, he said, were longing for the scourge of 
God to smite the earth, and in solemn accents he 
foretold a day that was drawing nigh when, hurrying 
down from the hills of the north, the agent of God's 
retribution would appear. " Over the Alps One is\ 
coming, sword in hand, against Italy, to chastise her I 
tyrants. His coming will be in the storm and whirl-/ 
wind, like that of Cyrus." 

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that 
the preaching of Savonarola was altogether in this 
severely denunciatory strain. Now and again his 
voice softened, and in tones of tenderness which went 
straight to the heart he spoke of his anxiety for his 
beloved Florence, of his sorrow for the sins of her 
people, his yearnings for their salvation, his fears and 
hopes regarding their future; and as he thus poured 



76 SAVONAROLA 

out his soul in fond concern and entreaty, the tears 
rolled down many a cheek, and even strong and 
hardened men were overcome. As Mary Tudor said 
of Calais, so might Savonarola have said of Florence, 
" If my heart were cut open, you would see the name 
engraved there." Florence and her interests were 
dear to his affections, never absent from his thought, 
and somehow in those earlier years of his ministry he 
made the citizens feel that it was so. 
f' It must, however, be acknowledged that, owing 
partly to his natural sombreness of temperament, and 
partly to his painful realisation of the evil conditions 
of his time, the great preacher contracted a style of 
discourse which was marked by severity of reproof 
I and denunciation as its predominant feature. Hence 
I there is considerable truth in Roscoe's description : 
'-"The Divine word from the lips of Savonarola de- 
scended not amongst his audience like the dews of 
heaven ; it was the piercing hail, the sweeping whirl- 
wind, the destroying sword." 

The Lent of the following year, 1494, is rendered 
memorable by the famous series of lectures on the 
Book of Genesis, which had been begun in 1492. 
Having proceeded in his exposition as far as the 
building of the Ark by Noah, he lingered over that 
subject, and day after day gave full range to his 
ingenuity in allegorical interpretation, astonishing his 
hearers by the wealth of spiritual instruction which 
he drew from every minute detail. The Ark was the 
shelter of the righteous from the storm of judgment ; 
its length signified faith; its breadth, charity; its 
height, hope. Every plank had its mystic meaning, 
and so many new thoughts offered themselves day by 



PREPARING FOR THE FLOOD ^7 

day, that it seemed as if he never could reach the story 
of the Flood itself. Still there rang through all the 
same message of warning, the same urgent appeal to 
repent and seek deliverance from the tribulation at 
hand. That message and warning were listened to 
with more living interest now. The public conscience, 
was gradually awakening. The burning words of the 
eloquent preacher were reaching Florentine hearts as 
well as captivating Florentine ears. A religious revival 
had begun. The abuses and iniquities of Church and 
State were coming home to men with a force unfelt 
before. The misdoings of a Pope like Alexander VL 
and the mismanagement of the city's affairs by Piero 
de Medici were creating a vague uneasiness and hauiit-.. 
ing fear. There was a presentiment of trouble on every 
side. Those sermons on the Ark, therefore, offering a 
refuge from the threatened calamities, and promising 
safety to Florence, the favoured city, if she should 
repent and turn to the Lord, met a conscious need 
in people's minds. But the Flood had not yet come. 



CHAPTEK X 

Amid the Throes of Revolution 

All through the summer of 1494 signs of storm and 
trouble loomed on the northern horizon. The young 
monarch, Charles viii. of France, as representing the 
house of Anjou, was preparing to assert an old claim to 
the kingdom of Naples, where Alfonso ii. had just 
recently succeeded to the throne. Pope Alexander vi., 
after appearing for a time to encourage Charles, had 
turned round and taken Alfonso's side in defence of his 
rights. But the most determined agent in fomenting 
the strife was Ludovico Sforza, the usurper of Milan, 
who had strong personal reasons for instigating 
Charles in prosecuting his design. Ludovico held his 
nephew, the rightful heir to the dukedom, in close 
confinement, and lived in terror of the vengeance 
threatened by the Neapolitan reigning family, to which 
the wife of the imprisoned Prince belonged. It was 
therefore to his interest that the southern kingdom 
should be seized by the foreigner. Another adviser 
in the same direction was the powerful cardinal, 
Giuliano della Rovere, who had been a candidate for 
the Papal chair, and who still bitterly resented the 
election of Pope Alexander in preference to himself by 
means of the lavish bribery employed. Rovere had 

78 



AMID THE THROES OF REVOLUTION 79 

deserted to the French King, and was now using his 
influence to urge him to strike a blow at Naples and 
Rome together. 

The land was in a ferment of restlessness as the 
summer wore on. Ambassadors hurried hither and 
thither ; intrigues were busy at Milan and Rome and 
at the French King's court ; rumours of all sorts flew 
abroad. The people everywhere were on the strain of 
expectancy. Many were ready to welcome the invader 
in the hope that his coming might be the means of 
redressing their grievances and righting their wrongs. 
There was a widespread feeling, so^ far strengthened 
by Savonarola's preaching, that some momentous 
change was at hand.- The Prior of San Marco had 
foretold, that the instrument of God's judgment would 
come from beyond the Alps, to purge the nation from 
its evil and renovate the Church ; here now, it seemed, 
in the monarch of France was the divinely-appointed 
messenger through whom the prediction was to be 
fulfilled. 

At Florence public sympathy, aflected largely by the 
memory of a long-standing friendship, was at first 
distinctly in favour of France. Piero de Medici, how- 
ever, regardless of popular sentiment, and without 
consulting the Signory, took the rash step of openly 
joining the alliance between Naples and the Pope. 
The Florentines were exasperated; Charles viii. was 
roused to wrath, not only against Piero but against 
Florence itself; and Ludovico Sforza, dreading the 
effect of so formidable a league on his own tenure of 
power, became more pressing than ever in inciting the 
French monarch to move southwards and march his 
armies over the land. 



80 SAVONAROLA 

The counsellors and generals of Charles had nothing 
but discouragement to offer to such an enterprise, 
which in their estimation was hazardous in the 
extreme ; but the King overruled all objections. He 
was consumed by a feverish ambition, and buoyed up 
by romantic dreams of adventure and conquest. He 
had conceived the idea of possessing the whole of Italy, 
of rising to imperial dignity, and making the Papac}'' 
dependent on France; and then, having gained a 
position at the head of Europe, he was to set forth on 
a holy crusade against the conquering Turks. With 
such visions of achievement kindling his imagination, 
he resolved to plunge into the undertaking, which 
looked so rich in gain and glory. 

In the beginning of September Charles crossed the 
Alps, and it was amid the tension of suspense created 
by the news of that event that Savonarola resumed the 
sermons on Noah's Ark which he had found himself so 
strangely unable to bring to a close in the previous 
\ spring. On 21st September he came to the passage, 
/ " Behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the 
A earth." Tidings had just reached Florence of the sack 
and pillage of Rapallq, on the northern coast, by a 
section of the French army, and a feeling of consterna- 
tion had been aroused. The popular sympathy with 
the invaders was now changed into an agitation of 
dismay as it began to be realised how grave a disaster 
the invasion was likely to prove. The Cathedral was 
crowded to its utmost capacity, by a congregation 
sensitively alive to every word which the Fra Girolamo 
had to say. With tremulous eagerness they waited for 
the great preacher, and when at last he mounted the 
pulpit and gave forth the text with a voice that 



AMID THE THROES OF REVOLUTION 8i 

sounded like thunder in the vast gloomy building, the 
words seemed to come as a supernatural announcement, 
miraculous in its very appropriateness. The hushed 
assembly, which embraced not only the chief merchants 
but many of the scholars and cultivated men of the 
city, listened awestruck under a deepening impression 
of the clearness and certainty with which the preacher's 
predictions were coming true. Savonarola himself, as 
all could see, was profoundly moved, and as he pro- 
claimed judgment against ungodliness, and implored his 
beloved Florence to repent and obtain deliverance from 
the Lord, he spoke as one overpowered by the sense of 
his own inspiration from on high. In speechless awe, 
and half dead with terror, the great audience, after the / 
sermon, passed out into the street. <' 

Slowly but steadily the flood of invasion swept south-^ 
ward and advanced towards Florence, the dissensions- 
and jealousies of the Italian States leaving its course 
comparatively unchecked. Piero de Medici, recognising 
his danger, and conscious of the utter want of support 
from his own people, took his fate in his hand and 
hurried off" alone to conciliate Charles and make terms 
of peace. So chilling, however, was his reception, 
that his weak spirit succumbed, and he consented 
to conditions which were humiliating in the lowest 
degree. He surrendered to Charles the border fort- 
resses of the Florentine territory, granted to him the 
right to occupy Pisa and Leghorn during the con- 
tinuance of the war, and promised to pay a subsidy of 
200,000 florins, without obtaining in return for such 
concessions any guarantee whatever either for his city 
or for himself. 

Florence rose in fury. Its independence had been 
6 



82 SAVONAROLA 

sold away by the arrogant Prince whose control of 
affairs was utterly regardless of the public good ; and 
the long-pent-up discontent found expression in a burst 
of revolutionary excitement. Savonarola rendered an 
important service by doing his utmost to hold that 
excitement under some rational restraint. He had now 
the general confidence of the citizens ; they knew him 
as an enemy of tyrants and an advocate of popular 
rights, and they looked to him as the one man sure to 
give them sympathy and guidance in this crisis of their 
fate. He had begun to preach on the Book of Haggai 
as affording a subject suited to the circumstances of 
the hour, and a dense mass packed the Cathedral to 
hear him. The burden of his message day after day, 
as. he confronted the sea of upturned, agitated faces, 

'^ was, " Eepent ; the salvation of Florence, of Rome, of 
Italy, is to come through repentance." With tender 

"''appeals and many a pathetic avowal of his tears and 
prayers for Florence, he exhorted the people to 
righteousness and faith and the fear of God. So 
strenuous indeed were his exertions, that he w^as 
reduced to exhaustion and his health was seriously 
affected for several days. But the public excitement 
was materially allayed, and prevented from rushing to 
wild and hazardous extremes. 

Meanwhile the officials of the city were addressing 
themselves to the practical political problem which had 
arisen.' On 4th November, the Signory, acting on 

/ their own initiative, summoned a special meeting of 

^-^jCpuncil, at which Pioro Capponi, a man of proved 
sagacity and high repute, gave voice to the general 
feeling. Piero de Medici, he declared, was no longer fit 
to govern the State, and the time had come to have 



AMID THE THROES OF REVOLUTION 83 

done with the government of children and to put forth 
an effort for the recovery of liberty. On Capponi's 
motion, it was resolved to send ambassadors to treat 
with Charles, and undo, if possible, the mischievous 
results of Piero's pusillanimous conduct. Those ambas- V 
sadors were to offer a friendly welcome to the King,,/ 
and his army on their march to the south. It was also 
resolved to collect the soldiers in secret places in the - 
city, and to call upon all classes to provide themselves 
with arms and be ready to issue forth and fight in case 
of need. And particularly Capponi urged, and the prcf- 
posal met with hearty agreement, that Fra Girolamo^ 
Savonarola should be sent as one of the ambassadors, 
seeing that he had gained the love of all the people. 

Fra Girolamo accepted the commission. In doing so \ 
he stepped into the arena of politics and took part in \ 
the first stages of a political revolution. True, he w^^s-^ 
a member of a monastic order, and as such supposed 
to be precluded from entangling himself with public 
earthly affairs. But the circumstances of the time and 
the force of his own large, strong nature had already 
lifted him into a position which he could not so faith- 
fully use for the glory of God and the cause of 
righteousness if trammelled by rigid monastic rules. 
By means of those sermons delivered from the Cathe- 
dral pulpit, as well as by the power of a pure and lofty 
example, the distinguished preacher had by this time 
wrought a marked effect on the Florentine people. He \ 
had welded them into a living unity of feeling such as \ 
had not for long been seen ; he had imbued large 1 
masses of them with exalted aims and with a spirit of / 
sacred fervour and religious faith ; he had reawakened j 
their sense of justice and their love of liberty, andy 



84 SAVONAROLA 

I given them a new conception of what a Christian city 
\ and commonwealth should be. There was no man who 
stood out so prominently as the representative of their 
best aspirations ; no man so thoroughly trusted alike 
for his courageous integrity, his warm humanity, and 
his unwearied interest in the public good. Even men 
of culture, to whom the lofty tone of his teaching had 
been at first distasteful, had come to feel the contagion 
of his spiritual enthusiasm, and yielded to his power. 
Angelo Poliziano, whom we have seen as the learned 
scholar and the trusted friend of Lorenzo de Medici, was 
softened in spirit and drawn into strong sympathy 
with Christian truth, and when he died, in September 
of that very year, he requested to be buried in the 
Dominican habit in the San Marco church. The 
versatile and brilliant Pico della Mirandola, who had 
all along been sensitive to Savonarola's moral and 
intellectual power, was so deeply touched, that he 
cherished the desire of joining the San Marco brother- 
hood. These are only isolated instances of the sway 
/ which Savonarola had gained over many of the most 
/ enlightened minds of the community. 
"" / Moreover, there can be little doubt that with a 
/ considerable section of the populace the ardent con- 
/ fidence placed in him as a leader was immensely 
\ enhanced by his strong assertion of supernatural 
claims, by his ecstatic and symbolic visions, and also 
by that air of certitude in announcing the designs of 
the Almighty in passing affairs which often gave to 
his sermons, as George Eliot says, " the interest of a 
.political bulletin." 

Accordingly, in the political service now thrust upon 
him, and in the conspicuous share he was henceforth to 



AMID THE THROES OF REVOLUTION 85 

take in the public life of the city, we can see only the 
natural result of the peculiar influence and position 
which Savonarola had gradually acquired. Indeed, his 
discourses in the Duomo had already become political 
incidents, and it was inevitable that a man of such 
commanding personality and strong hold on the general 
regard should be forced to come to the front in the 
critical situation which had emerged. To Savonarola 
himself the constraint of circumstances was a call from 
Heaven. He saw in it a sign of the Supreme Will to 
which it behoved him to bow ; as he said a short time 
afterwards, " I was in a safe haven, the life of a friar. 
. . . The Lord has driven my barque into the open sea. 
Before me on the vast ocean I see terrible tempests 
brewing. Behind I have lost sight of my haven ; the 
wind drives me forward, and the Lord forbids my 
return." 

Before setting out on his errand to Charles, Savon- 
arola delivered one of his great sermons, imploring the 
citizens to be steadfast in mercy and peace. " If you 
would have the Lord to continue His mercy towards 
you," he ended by saying, " be you merciful towards 
your brethren, your friends, and even your enemies." 
Then, with two of his own friars as companions, he 
departed on foot for Pisa, where the other ambassadors 
had preceded him. They had had their interview with 
the French King before Savonarola arrived, but found 
that Charles would promise nothing, and postponed 
all negotiations until he should reach Florence in 
person. 

Piero de Medici, who was still with the King, took 
alarm when the ambassadors appeared. Their coming 
on an independent mission from the city was to him 



S6 SAVONAROLA 

an evidence that some change of serious moment had 
occjirred. He hastened back to Florence, determined 
/to assert his ascendancy, only to discover, as it proved, 
{ that the Signory were prepared to resist his reassump- 
Vtjon of power. He entered the cit}^ on the evening of 
8th November, and when, on the following day, he 
presented himself with his retinue at the magisterial 
palace, he was treated as the betrayer of the State, and 
after a scene of heated recrimination, the gates were 
shut in his face. The great bell of the palace-tower 
overhead rang out the hammer-sound of alarm, and 
the crowd thronged into the piazza. Piero was driven 
to take shelter from the burst of rage which quickly 
rose around him. An attempt was made to rally the 
populace in his favour, but the once powerful Medicean 
watchword, Palle, Palle ("The Balls, The Balls"), had 
lost its spell, and was drowned in the loud counter- 
cries, Popolo e Liberia ! Ahasso le Palle (" The People 
and Liberty 1 " " Down with the Balls ! "). And so 
menacing was the attitude of all classes, that Piero 
: was obliged to seek safety in flight, first to Bologna, 
1 and afterwards to Venice, followed by a sentence of 
I outlawry, which the Signory immediately passed, 
'^"""Tlius was the rule of the Medici in Florence over- 
thrown, and a Republic established once more. It was 
a bloodless revolution, and comparatively free from 
excesses, only a few attempts being made to loot the 
houses of the leading Medici partisans. This singular 
absence of scenes of violence and licence in a crisis so 
intensely exciting, is ascribed by the common consent 
of historians to the higher moral temper which Savon- 
arola's preaching had gradually infused into the popular 
mind. 



I 



AMID THE THROES OF REVOLUTION Sy 

Savonarola himself was still detained at Pisa on his 
embassy to Charles. The French King was deeply 
interested in the visit of this remarkable man, who had 
invested his own descent into Italy with all the sanctity 
of a mission from Heaven. Here, it seemed, was a 
prophet sent from the Almighty, whose message 
hitherto had been encouraging to France. But 
Charles could scarcely have been prepared for the 
strange address which he now received when the dark- 
robed, sallow-faced, lustrous-eyed monk from Florence 
was ushered into his presence — an address in which 
words of welcome were ominously mingled with utter- i 
ances of admonition and warning. He told Charles j 
that he was the Heaven-chosen instrument for the I 
reformation of Italy, whose advent he had prophesiec^/ 
for the three previous years ; and then he went on to 
say : " At length thou art come, King, as the minister 
of God, the minister of justice. May thy coming prove 
to us altogether happy in its results. It fills with joy 
all servants of Christ, all lovers of justice, and all who 
are zealous for the life of piety. Go forward, then, 
glad, secure, and triumphant, since thou art sent by 
Him who triumphed on the cross for our salvation. 
But, most Christian King, give ear to my words and 
lay them to thy heart. The unworthy servant of God 
to whom those things have been revealed admonishes 
thee in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
and in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that thou 
must in all things incline to mercy ; but most of all 
towards this city of Florence, which, although it labours 
beneath a heavy load of transgressions, contains many 
true servants of God, of both sexes. For their sake 
thou must preserve this city, that we may with more 



88 SAVONAROLA 

tranquil mind pray for thee and draw down the bless- 
ing of God on this expedition. The same unworthy- 
servant exhorts and admonishes thee to give all diligence 
in the defence and protection of the innocent, the 
widows, the orphans, and all who deserve mercy, but 
most of all to guard the honour of those devoted to 
Christ in the nunneries, lest through thee sin should 
more abound, and the strength vouchsafed to thee from 
on high be shattered. And if, O King, thou observe 
these things, God will increase thy temporal kingdom, 
grant victory to thy arms, and at last bestow upon 
thee the everlasting kingdom of heaven. But if thou 
dost forget the work for which the Lord sends thee, 
He will choose another in thy place and will pour upon 
thee His wrath. These things I tell thee in the name 
of the Lord." 

Charles never fulfilled the sanguine expectations 
which Savonarola entertained regarding him. There' 
was nothing in his character and aims to warrant 
such expectations. He might be the scourge of God 
to afflict Italy for the treacherous intrigues of its 
princes, for its miserable dissensions and pervading 
corruption, but he lacked the large nobility of purpose 
which might qualify him for any higher service. As 
an agent in restoring a righteous order in the Italian 
States, or in removing the abuses of the Church, he 
was utterly incompetent. Savonarola's hope in him 
was a sentimental delusion. And here we begin to see 
how the great friar's reliance, which was now becoming \ 
confirmed, in the Divine inspiration of his own forecasts / 
of events, was likely to prove a snare of serious risk to / 
himself and to his work ; and it is a pathetic reflection^, 
which keeps forcing itself upon us from this stage 



AMID THE THROES OF REVOLUTION 89 

onward, that the later usefulness of that lofty and 
splendid mind should have been marred as it was by a 
hallucination so devout and yet so deceptive. Savon- 
arola believed, and believed sincerely, that he knew 
the intentions of the Most High with respect to the 
French King's invasion, and he proclaimed his belief 
with unfaltering authority ; but it was a false con- 
fidence. The first patent indication which Charles 
gave of his moral unreliableness was in the cool 
indifference with which, on his arrival at Pisa, he 
allowed its inhabitants to throw ofi" their allegiance to 
Florence, thus aggravating the disorders and animos- 
ities which were already too rife in the land. It 
would appear, however, that by his powerful and 
solemn address Savonarola produced for the moment a 
favourable impression on the French King's mind ; and 
although he obtained no definite assurances on behalf 
of Florence, he returned to the city with faith still 
strong, and prepared to hold out some encouraging 
hopes. 



CHAPTEE XI 
Charles VIII. in Florence 

On the 17 th of November King Charles entered 
Florence with his army, and the city was decked as 
for a festival in his honour. Banners waved from 
windows and balconies, brilliant draperies hung from 
roof to roof, a blaze of colour filled the streets and the 
piazzas through which he was to pass. Amid dense 
crowds that looked on with mingled wonder and fear, 
the glittering warrior host marched across the Ponte 
Vecchio, and on towards the Duomo — the artillery 
corps and their ponderous cannons; the Swiss moun- 
taineers carrying their burnished halberds ; the Gascon 
infantry with their flashing swords ; the French nobles, 
splendidly mounted and attired in mantles embroidered 
with gold; the cavalry and their formidable steeds; 
the tall Scottish and north-countrj^ archers with their 
long wooden bows — a display of military power 
such as had not been witnessed in Florence for 
generations. 

Attended by his bodyguard of a hundred men, and 
under a rich canopy, rode Charles himself on his war- 
horse, magnificently arrayed, with a crown on his head 
and lance held level in his hand, as a token that he 
came as a conqueror. Despite his splendour of dress 

90 



CHARLES VIII. IN FLORENCE 91 

and equipage, the French monarch presented a figure 
unprepossessing almost to a grotesque degree. He 
had a large head, but puny limbs. The Venetian 
Ambassador Contarini described him as insignificant 
in appearance, with an ugly face, lustreless eyes, 
enormous hooked nose, thick lips which were always 
open, and nervous twitching hands which were never 
still. Such in bodily presence was the royal guest 
whom the Florentines welcomed with occasional, though 
by no means enthusiastic, shouts of Viva Francia ! on 
that memorable day. 

After joining with the Signory in a service at the 
Cathedral, Charles was conducted to the Medici palace 
in the Via Larga, which had been prepared for his 
reception, while his troops were quartered in the 
houses of the people. Then at night the city was 
illuminated, and for two days thereafter there was 
general mirth and feasting, though behind all the 
gaiety the soldiers of the Republic lurked in secret, 
with arms ready in case of encroachment by the 
foreigners on the liberties which had just recently 
been won. 

Those liberties, it was soon seen, were imperilled 
not only by the insolence of the French troops, but 
also by the manifest disposition of the King to secure 
the reinstatement of Piero de Medici as a prince 
dependent on France. Such a design aroused universal 
alarm, and an assembly of the principal citizens was 
held to protest against it and to devise measures for its 
prevention. Quarrels took place daily in the streets 
between the French soldiers and the populace, and in 
one of these, which arose out of the forced release of 
some prisoners of war, the Swiss infantry sallied forth 



92 SAVONAROLA 

in martial strength, but met with such resistance from 
barricades erected across their path, and from showers 
of stones and other missiles hurled from housetops and 
windows, that they were forced to beat a retreat, awed 
by a sense of the terrible ordeal of having to fight with 
almost invisible foes in such a labyrinth of narrow 
thoroughfares. In view of this menacing mood of 
feeling, Charles found himself obliged to abandon his 
proposal for Piero's restoration. He saw that he could 
no longer affect to treat Florence as a conquered city. 
Nevertheless the magistrates had the utmost difficulty 
in moderating his demands and confining: them within 
such limits as would leave the independence of the 
Republic untouched. At length the issue of the negoti- 
ations turned on the settlement of those two points — 
the sum of money which Charles insisted on receiving, 
but which the Florentines deemed far too large; and the 
claim put forward to have a representative of France 
in the Florentine Assembly, wdiose presence and assent 
should be necessary to the validity of the proceedings — a 
claim felt to be intolerable. When the Commissioners of 
^ihe Republic remonstrated, Charles broke into a rage,and 
('ordered his Ultimatum to be read. The Commissioners 
^ declared it to be impossible to comply with its con- 
I ditions. " Then," cried the King, with growing passion, 
! " we will blow our trumpets." Here Capponi stepped 
\ to the front, and, snatching the paper from the secret- 
I ary's hand, he tore it in pieces, exclaiming, " And we 
i^ill ring our bells." Such bold language, destined to 
be cherished with patriotic pride in the Florentine 
memory, revealed to Charles the indomitable spirit 
with which he had to deal, and he at once drew back 
from his irreconcilable attitude under cover of a coarse 



CHARLES VIII. IN FLORENCE 93 

pleasantry on Capponi's name. It was at last agreed^ 
that the King should be recognised as the Protector of 
Florentine liberty, that he should be paid 120,000 
florins, that Pisa and the other fortresses should be 1 
restored as soon as the war with Naples came to an] 
end, and that the sentence of exile against Piero de; 
Medici should be allowed to remain in force. The con- 
ditions of the treaty thus arranged were formally . 
sworn to in the Cathedral, and then the bells were 
rung, bonfires were lit, and there was great rejoicing. 

Still, all danger was not yet past. Charles and his 
army lingered in the city, giving rise to fresh sus- 
picion, and to irritation and disorder out of which 
grave consequences threatened to spring. Shops were 
closed, business was suspended, and citizens and soldiers 
were constantly on the point of coming to open strife 
in the streets. At this distracting and hazardous^ 
juncture of affairs, it was Savonarola who solved J 
the difiiculty and saved Florence. He had been doing 
his utmost in the pulpit to calm the public mind 
during the strained and anxious days through which 
the city had been passing; and now, when asked to 
use his influence with the French King and hasten 
his departure, he at once responded to the call and 
braved the risks. Making his way to the palace, and 
overcoming somehow the opposition of the officials and 
nobles, who dreaded the effect of his visit in diminish- 
ing their chances of plunder, he gained admission to 
the royal presence. He told Charles that his stay was 
causing great injury to the city and to his own enter- 
prise; that he was wasting time and forgetting the 
duty laid upon him by Providence. " Listen now," he 
said, "to the voice of God's servant. Go thy way 



94 SAVONAROLA 

without delay, and do not bring ruin on this city, lest 
the anger of the Lord be roused against thee, and He 
choose another instrument to carry out His designs." 
By this prophet-like appeal he gained the result 
desired, and on 28th November Charles left Florence, 
and the citizens awoke as from a nightmare of 
anxiety. 

Ere they departed, however, the foreigners were 
guilty of an act of ruthless cupidity and destructive- 
ness. The sumptuously furnished Medici palace was 
ransacked of its treasures, and transformed into a 
wreck, by the barons, generals, and attendants of the 
King. They seized the many priceless specimens of 
the arts with which the house abounded, and which 
had rendered it the admiration of strangers and one 
of the chief ornaments of the city. Exquisite pieces of 
ancient sculpture, vases, cameos, and gems of various 
kinds, more estimable for their workmanship than for 
the value of their material, shared in the wholesale 
spoliation ; and, in the words of Roscoe, " all that the 
assiduity and the riches of Lorenzo and his ancestors 
had been able to accumulate in half a century, was 
dissipated and demolished in a day." But the danger 
was removed, and the Florentines were glad. The 
independence of the Republic was now safe; and 
Savonarola's place in the affections of the people was 
still further confirmed by the effort he had made to 
accomplish that end. 



CHAPTER XII 

The Peeacher as Lawgiver 

No sooner were the French gone than the interest of ? 
all classes in Florence was concentrated on the work of '' 
political reconstruction which lay waiting to be done. 
Now that the rule of the Medici was overthrown, the 
government of the State had to be organised on a new^ 
basis; and here the difficulties that usually attend a 
revolutionary movement arose. The air was full of 
excitement, and in the public mind, long unaccustomed 
to habits of self-reliance in political action, there was 
no definite conception as to the form which the new 
constitution should take. The prevailing desire was to 
secure for every respectable citizen not only the right 
to vote in the election of his rulers, but also a chance 
of personally enjoying a short term of rule. This was 
now the Florentine ideal of liberty, but how to get it 
realised was far from clear. 

The members of the Signory appointed under Piero 
de Medici had been obliged to remain in office and ad- 
minister affairs until the dangers of the French occupa- 
tion were past. Then they summoned a Parlamenlio, ] 
an assembly of the whole body of the people. The/ 
great bell tolled, and the citizens crowded into the/ 
piazza in front of the Signorial palace, to hear and 

95 



96 SAVONAROLA 

decide upon the proposals which the Signory, from the 
ringhiera, or balcony near the palace steps, had to 
submit. This was the ancient form of procedure, 
which, while it gave the appearance of a free share in 
the government to every citizen, was yet liable to be 
turned to account for selfish ends by designing politi- 
cians and by ambitious men, who by plausible arts 
were able to gain the ear and sway the votes of the 
undiscerning multitude. As yet, however, no other 
course suggested itself than that of advancing along 
the lines rendered familiar by traditional usage, and 
accordingly the first attempts at reconstruction were 
somewhat crude. The chief measure recommended to 
i!he Assembly was the appointment of a Committee of 
/Twenty, the Accopiatori, as they were called ; and to 
; these it was proposed to grant the right of Balia, a 
I sort of dictatorial power, with authority to elect the 
I Signory and the other leading officials, the Accopiatori 
Vthemselves to be changed every year, and the members 
*" of the Signory every two months. The people, elated 
by the new consciousness of independence and direct 
control in State aflfairs, passed the measure with accla- 
mation. 

In those first efibrts of political reorganisation 
Savonarola took no active part. He was busily occu- 
/pied in endeavouring to assuage the popular unrest, 
and in relieving the distress caused by the general sus- 
\ pension of business. He made special appeals in his 
sermons on behalf of the needy, entreating the rich to 
give of their abundance, and to sacrifice their pomps 
and luxuries, in order to meet the destitution existing 
around them. He urged that the shops should be re- 
opened, work provided for the unemployed, and collec- 



THE PREACHER AS LAWGIVER 97 

tions made in all the churches, declaring that, though 
it was the will of God that evil customs and unjust 
laws should be abolished, it was still imperative on 
men to fulfil their obvious duties. " This," he said, " is 
a time for words to give place to deeds. The Lord 
hath said, I was an hungered and ye gave Me no meat ; 
I was naked and ye clothed Me not. He never said, 
Ye built Me not a beautiful church or a fine convent. 
The work of renovation, then, must begin with charity." 
Now, as ever, he strove to enforce the practical side of 
religion, and laboured to promote the welfare of the 
city by infusing the Christian spirit into its ordinary 
social life. 

Soon, however, he was drawn once more into the full 
current of political activity. From the outset the j 
newly-framed constitution would not work. Its ar- 
rangements were too vague and loosely defined; and 
amid the friction and discontent thereby engendered 
the task of remoulding the government had to be beguh\ 
afresh. The serious disadvantage was that the sixty 
years of Medici rule had deprived the prominent men of 
any real experience in legislative business, and there- 
fore there was no man competent to take the lead. A 
school of young political thinkers, with the subtle 
Machiavelli among them, was growing up ; yet they 
were but theoretical students, who had no practical 
acquaintance with men or matters of State ; while the 
conspicuous citizens who had held the magistracy were 
familiar only with the bare routine of official duty, and 
utterly unversed in the making of laws. During the 
discussions which arose, the Venetian form of govern- 
ment was repeatedly suggested as an example which it 
might be possible in some measure to adopt; and in 
7 



98 SAVONAROLA 

the heat of controversy over this question time was 
being wasted and people's minds were becoming con- 
fused. 

Then came Savonarola's unique and supreme oppor- 
tunity, which he felt irresistibly impelled to use. Ever 
alive to the movements of life and feeling around him, 
he had watched the commotion keenly, and pondered 
the problems which had to be faced. He realised the 
danger which hung over the city so long as its govern- 
[ ment remained unsettled, for he knew that the adherents 
1 of the old order, who had been allowed to return un- 
\ molested to their homes mainly through the forbear- 
j ance which he had enjoined, were waiting and hoping 
Sfor the chance of restoring the Medici to power, or of 
seizing the reins of government in their own hands. 
He knew, moreover, that the thoughts of men were 
turning to himself for guidance in their perplexity. 
Once more the force of strong character, intellectual 
capacity, and transparent disinterestedness was press- 
ing the task of leadership upon the eloquent monk 
who had already proved a tower of strength in the 
exigencies of the commonwealth. Counsel, assistance, 
|and even commands, were expected from him in the 
I difficult task of remodelling the constitution, and it 
n was less possible for him now than ever to stand by 
^and be silent. 

^ Accordingly^, on the third Sunday in Advent of this 
/ same year 1494, he began to speak out on the public 
' questions of the hour, and in doing so he assumed the 
authoritative tone of a lawgiver directly inspired by 
\^God. In his sermon on that day, and the other ser- 
mons that followed, he made it evident that he had 
studied matters of politics to some purpose, and that 



THE PREACHER AS LAWGIVER 99 

he had a surprisingly clear grasp of political principles. 
Discussing the respective merits of monarchy and re- 
publicanism, he declared monarchy to be the best form 
of government when the monarch is a good man, but 
when the monarch is a bad man the worst form pos- 
sible. " In Italy, and especially in Florence," he said, 
" where both strength and intellect abound, where men 
have sharp wits and restless spirits, the government 
of one could only exist as a tyranny. . . . The only 
government that can suit us is the government of the 
citizens, and one in which all have a share." He 
warned the Florentines against electing one man as 
chief to domineer over all the rest. He told them to 
purify their hearts, give heed to the common good, 
forget private interests, and assured them that if they 
reformed the city in this earnest temper it would be- 
come more glorious than ever yet it had been, and they 
should begin the reformation of all Italy, and spread 
their wings over the earth to reform all nations ; and 
breaking out into prayer, he cried, " Open, Lord, the 
heart of this people, that they may understand those 
things which are in my mind, and which Thou hast 
revealed and commanded." 

Then he went on to avow that his sole reason for 
interfering with matters of State was his concern for 
men's salvation. He had no care for politics except as j 
an instrument of morality. All temporal good, he iiT^ 
sisted, must be subordinate to the moral and religious 
good on which it depends. " If ye have heard it said " 
— as it had been said by Cosimo de Medici — '•' that 
States cannot be governed by Pater Nosters, remember 
that this is the theory of tyrants, of men who are the 
enemies of God and the common weal, a theory in- 
LofC. 



100 SAVONAROLA 

vented to oppress and not to elevate and free the city. 
On the contrary, if ye would have a good government, 
ye must submit to God. If it were not so, I should 
certainly not concern myself for a State that should not 
be subject to Him." 

At last he came to the practical point, and announced 
his conviction that a Grand Council on the Venetian 
plan was the best adapted for Florence. He believed, 
le said, that the Venetian model would be the one 
chosen. But they need not be ashamed to imitate the 
Venetians and their constitution, '' because they too 
received it from the Lord, from whom cometh every- 
thing that is good. Ye have seen that ever since that 
government has existed in Venice no divisions or dis- 
sensions of any sort have arisen in that city; and 
therefore we must believe that it was according to 
the will of God." 

The views thus propounded from the Cathedral 
pulpit Savonarola afterwards published in his Trattato 
circa il Begghnento e Governo delta Cittd di Firenza 
(Treatise respecting the Rule and Government of the 
City of Florence). They were views in which he was 
strongly supported hy two men who stood out most 
clearly as representatives of the popular party — 
Antonio Soderini and Francesco Valori. Soderini, a 
doctor of law who had served for some years as 
Ambassador at Venice, had been favourably impressed 
by what he saw of the method of government there, 
and was anxious to obtain a trial for it in Florence. 
Valori was an old partisan of the Medici family, and 
had filled many posts under Lorenzo, but partly 
through disgust with Piero's misrule, and partly 
through warm religious sympathy, he had become 



THE PREACHER AS LAWGIVER loi 

one of Savonarola's most devoted followers. He was 
a man of no great mental strength, but honest, daring, 
large-hearted, and an ardent friend of republican liberty. 
These, along with Capponi and many other men of 
note, were delighted to have the dim ideas floating in 
their minds put into definite shape and confidently 
championed by one so eminent. The feeling of satis- 
faction was shared by the general community, who 
were relieved to find that their admired Fra Girolamo 
was prepared to guide them by a clear and intelligible 
course out of their bewilderment. There was an op-\ 
posing party, however, headed by Guid' Antonio Ves- j 
pucci, a distinguished member of the legal profession^ 
who maintained that a Grand Council after the manner 
of the Venetians would be too democratic an institu- 
tion for such a city as Florence, whose lower classes 
were more numerous and restless, and also less con- 
trollable in temper, than the Venetians were. This 
party leaned rather to an oligarchical form of polity. 
But they were left with slender prospects of success 
after Savonarola had spoken. His powerful advocacy 
of the Venetian model weighed decisively in turning 
the scale. The leading members of the Signory con- 
sulted him at San Marco, and even asked him to meet 
with them at the Palazzo and preach. Then one day 
he invited the magistrates and all the people, except- 
ing the women and children, to assemble in the Cathe- 
dral. He exhorted his immense audience to lay to 
heart the lessons of the past, and so to use their power 
that freedom henceforward should not be the privilege 
of the few for the oppression of the many, but a 
universal benefit. And after this introduction, he 
proceeded to lay down what he believed to be the 



I02 SAVONAROLA 

four great principles which formed the groundwork 
of all true government : — 

(1) The fear of God and the reformation of manners ; 
(2) zeal for popular government and the public good, 
above all private interests; (3) a general amnesty, 
whereby the friends of the past Government should 
be absolved from all their crimes and have their fines 
remitted, and indulgence be shown towards those who 
are indebted to the State; (4) a form of universal 
government which should comprehend all citizens who, 
according to the ancient statutes, had a right to share 
in public affairs. 

He brought his discourse to a close by a clear and 
emphatic recommendation once more of a Grand Coun- 
cil after the manner of the Venetians, modified by 
such arrangements as might render it more suited to 
the genius and temper of the Florentine people. 

This pronouncement virtually settled the question. 
The air of authority with which it was given forth, 
sustained as it was by the recollection of the mar- 
vellous vindications of the preacher's former utter- 
ances, mightily impressed the popular mind. Men of 
action and knowledge of the world were amazed at 
the large view and firm mastery displayed in dealing 
with a problem ,so^.tanglM-aJKi complexx The result 
was seen in the speedy adoption of the very measures 
which Savonarola had proposed. On the 23rd of 
December a law was passed by an overwhelming 
majority, establishing a Great Council endowed with 
. powers to elect the chief magistrates and control the 
V^tion of the State. Eligibility to membership in this 
Council was restricted to the class of citizens who 
had reached twenty-nine years of age and had paid 



THE PREACHER AS LAWGIVER 103 

taxes, and who also ranked as benefiziati, i.e. had in 
their own person or in the person of their immediate 
ancestors enjoyed the lenefit of holding, or being 
proposed for, one of the higher offices. In view of 
such a provision, it cannot be said that the new con- 
stitution was extravagantly democratic. As it proved, 
the number of benefiziati of the required age at the 
time of the first election was comparatively small — 
only 3200 out of a population of 90,000. This body 
was again divided into three sections, each section 
fulfilling the duties of government in turn for a term 
of six months. In order to provide for a gradual 
widening of the range of political privilege, it was 
further enacted that every three years sixty citizens 
who were not benefiziati, and twenty young men of 
the age of twenty-four, should be chosen for member- 
ship in the Great Council. 

There was also instituted a lesser Council of Eighty, 
the Ottanta, which formed a sort of senate or upper 
chamber, to consult with the Signory once a week, 
and in conjunction with the other officials to appoint 
ambassadors and conduct foreign and military affairs. 
This Council was to be renewed every six months, and 
its members were to be not less than forty years of 
age. 

It was in the Signory, whose members were elected 
by the Great Council and changed every two months, 
that all new laws were first to be proposed and dis- 
cussed. Then, if approved, they were to be brought 
before the Council of Eighty, and from there they 
were to be carried to the Greater Council, which alone 
would have authority to pronounce the final decision, 
the vote being taken in silence, and no one having the 



I04 SAVONAROLA 

right to speak except by the request of the Signory, 
and that only in favour of the measure submitted. 

There was also instituted another small body of 
Ten, whose duty it was to decide on the remittance 
of taxes and unpaid fines imposed by the Medici 
Government, and to take means for a more equitable 
revision of the whole system of taxation. This was 
a question which Savonarola held to be acutely press- 
ing, and with painstaking earnestness he strove to 
obtain the substitution of some more just arrangement 
in place of the arbitrary methods till then in force. 
As the result of his efforts, a new law was passed 
which regulated all assessments by a uniform prin- 
ciple, and, by levying a payment of ten per cent, on 
all income from real property, provided for a more 
impartial distribution of the public burdens. This 
was a reform which allayed many a grievance, and 
proved an untold benefit to Florence for many a day. 
It was, moreover, decreed that every enactment of the 
State, instead of being drawn out as heretofore in 
Latin, the language of scholars, should be written in 
Italian, the tongue of the people. 

/ On another point of considerable importance Savon- 
/arola exerted his influence — the establishment of a 
\^right of appeal in the case of political ofiences. In 
the Council for dealing with such ofiences the ancient 
statute required a majority of two-thirds ere a heavy 
sentence could be pronounced. This was what was 
styled the Law of the Six Beans — the Sei Fave, beans 
being the means by which voting was conducted 
in Florence. Savonarola's fear was that a court so 
small, the members of which, moreover, were changed 
every few months, might be liable to impulses of party 



THE PREACHER AS LAWGIVER 105 

feeling and betrayed into acts of injustice towards 
political opponents ; and by advocating a right of 
appeal he endeavoured to avoid that danger. He 
gained his object so far. The right of appeal was 
formally decreed, though not precisely in the form 
which he desired. His proposal was that a special 
Council of Eighty should be chosen from the members 
of the Great Council, to serve as a check on the abso- 
lute authority of the Six Beans, believing that such 
a tribunal would be less readily swayed by factious 
bitterness on the one hand, or by outbursts of popular 
vehemence on the other. But the law, as ultimately 
passed, enacted that the Great Council itself was the 
body to which the appeal should be made. 

Thus step by step the fabric of the new constitution^ 
of Florence was built up. It was a work of several 
months, absorbing attention and exciting lively de- 
bate among all ranks in the city; but the guiding 
spirit in it all was the Prior of San Marco. Every 
fresh measure introduced was preceded by one or 
more sermons from him, in which the subject was 
handled with a point, vigour, and practical insight 
into the requirements of the situation which strongly 
commended it to the popular intelligence. Savonarola 
treated the questions .of life with the mind of a lay- 
man rather than that of an ecclesiastic. He had in 
him the spirit of the earlier monks. The monks were 
originally laymen pure and simple, and it was only 
after they had existed for centuries that they became 
infected with the ecclesiastical spirit, and contracted 
the narrow professionalism of view by which the 
ecclesiastical spirit is so frequently characterised. It 
is probable that he was in frequent consultation with 



io6 SAVONAROLA 

the public-spirited men who were actively engaged in 
meeting the exigencies of the time, and many of whom 
placed great reliance on his sincerity and wisdom. 
Yet obviously his was the ruling, animating mind. 
His ideas, his very words, were echoed in the de- 
liberations of the Signorial palace, and the decisions 
reached were but the formal reproduction of the 
proposals which he had advanced. He stood now in 
fa position hitherto unprecedented in the history of 
1 Christendom — that of a preacher dictating from the 
I pulpit the policy and business of a State. There was 
Veo abatement of his zeal for the moral and spiritual 
elevation of the people ; he was still fervently intent 
on proclaiming the great truths of religion and win- 
ning men into obedience to God. But profoundly 
anxious for the welfare of the city, and positively 
convinced of the Divine enlightenment given him, he 
was impelled to assume the function of legislative 
director, and to use his power as a religious teacher 
in establishing a form of government which he be- 
lieved to be in accordance with the will of God. His 
utterances in the Cathedral rang with an accent of 
Heaven-born inspiration which never faltered. He 
stood there and spoke as the prophet of the Lord, like 
another Moses, another Samuel, proclaiming the behests 
of the Eternal King whose loyal subjects he wished the 
Florentines to be ; and, conscious in himself of no self- 
/aggrandising aims, bent only on founding a healthier 
/ and happier civic and political life on the sure principles 
J of justice and righteousness, he gave forth his judg- 
\ ments on the questions at issue with an enthusiasm so 
contagious, and an energy of conviction so overpowering, 
as to compel general assent and strike opposition dumb. 



THE PREACHER AS LAWGIVER 107 

And many competent witnesses, free from suspicion 
of bias in Savonarola's favour, have declared their 
admiration of the form of government established in 
Florence by his means. Professor Villari quotes the 
testimony of such eminent political thinkers as 
Machiavelli, Giannotti, and Francesco Guicciardini 
— themselves Florentines — in proof of the wise, 
moderate, and balanced character of the remodelled 
constitution, which avoided alike the extremes of 
aristocratic exclusiveness and democratic turbulence, 
and secured the largest amount of privilege and well- 
ordered freedom compatible with the circumstances of 
the time. It has been the frankly expressed verdict 
of many since that the political system then framed 
was the best and most just that the Florentine people 
ever enjoyed. The chief defect detected in it, both by 
contemporary and later writers, was its failure to pro- 
vide for a Gonfaloniere, or President, for life, or at 
least a President whose tenure of office should extend 
over a period of years instead of only over a few 
months. Yet even those who have advanced this 
criticism have been constrained to acknowledge that, 
in the condition of feeling and of parties then existing 
in Florence, the difficulties connected with such a pro- 
vision, particularly the difficulty of selection, would 
have been a serious peril at the outset of the new 
regime. The wonder ever remains that a preaching 
friar, whose vocation afforded no special training in 
the business of State, should have been the moving 
spirit and presiding genius in reorganising the Re- 
public on lines so sagacious and, at that stage of 
history, so practically sound. 



CHAPTER XIII 

The Dream of a Theocracy 

A revolution had been accomplished and a republi- 
can government restored to Florence, and all without 
the deplorable excesses of riot, plunder, and bloodshed 
which in those days were the usual accompaniments of 
sudden political change. Thanks to the exertions of 
Savonarola, partisan fury and popular violence had 
been kept under a singular and happy restraint. The 
refounding of a free constitution was hailed by the 
citizens with emphatic demonstrations of joy ; and to 
mark the opening of a new era in the history and for- 
tunes of the city, the famous bronze statue of Judith 
and Holofernes by Donatello, which had formerly be- 
longed to the Medici, was set up at the gateway of 
the Signorial palace, bearing an inscription which 
stated that it had been placed there by the citizens as 
a memorial of the safety of the commonwealth. 

In the meantime, amid all the strain of directing 
the work of political reconstruction, a remarkable 
effect had been produced on Savonarola's own mind. 
We have seen how, in those exciting months at the 
close of 1494 and the beginning of 1495, the Floren- 
tines of all ranks had put themselves under his guid- 
ance and accepted his leadership as the messenger of 

108 



THE DREAM OF A THEOCRACY 109 

Heaven in the framing of their laws. This ready sub- 
missiveness on their part, and the enthusiastic con- 
fidence reposed in him, woke into new energy and 
vividness a conception which had hovered before his 
thought for many years. Ever since he found his\ 
true power in the pulpit, it had been the cherished aim | 
of his heart to convert Florence into a city of the | 
Heavenly King. He dreamed of a theocracy, a strictlyi 
ordered Christian State, in which immorality should j 
be suppressed, social and civic life be ruled by the/ 
precepts of the Gospel, charity, righteousness, and the\ 
fear of God be enthroned in men's hearts, and private 1 
interest sacrificed to the common good. And now that 
he had attained his extraordinary position as virtual 
arbiter of the city's destinies, he was encouraged to 
believe that the time had come for translating this 
fair dream into a reality. That unique concurrence of 
circumstances which placed him where he stood — was 
it not a sign from above that the grand task which 
had long fired his hopes was at last made possible 
and should now be essayed ? Florence was a city be- 
loved of God, a peculiar object of celestial favour and 
care, destined to be the scene of Divine manifestations 
and to stand as a witness of the truth to all the States 
around. That he had long believed, and often ex- 
pressly declared, and the opportunity, as it seemed, 
had arrived for lifting the chosen city to the full proof 
of its privilege in the designs of the Supreme. He 
would change Florence into a home of moral rectitude 
and political freedom ; he would rally its citizens to- 
gether as the subjects of the Most High, and the reign 
of justice and purity would begin. He himself would 
be the viceroy of Heaven, declaring the will of the 



no SAVONAROLA 

Invisible Lord, and enforcing the laws which he was 
commissioned to reveal. It was a bold idea, and there 
was boldness also in the steps taken to carry it out. 
The first announcement of it gave rise to an extra- 
ordinary exhibition of enthusiasm. It was in one of 
his early political sermons from the Book of Haggai, 
during the Advent of 1 494. Discoursing on the pre- 
ference which some might be imagined to entertain for 
a monarchical form of government, and holding his 
audience for a while in suspense, the preacher ex- 
claimed, "Well, Florence, God is willing to satisfy 
thee, and to give thee a Head, a King to govern thee. 
This King is Christ. The Lord will govern thee Him- 
self, if thou consent, O Florence. Suffer thyself to be 
guided by Him. . . . Take Christ for thy Master, and 
remain subject to His law." Then, after enlarging on 
the spiritual and temporal wealth and the mighty 
influence for good over Italy and other nations which 
the acceptance of such Divine sovereignty would 
bring, he clinched his appeal by a direct and thrilling 
challenge : " Florence, Jesus Christ, who is King of the 
universe, hath willed to become thy King in parti- 
cular. Wilt thou have Him for thy King ? " The 
multitude, swayed by one irrepressible feeling, burst 
into a great shout. Viva Gesu Cristo nostra Be ; and 
the exclamation in which they thus proclaimed Jesus 
Christ as the Monarch of their choice became the 
watchword of the new order of things. 
(^ Having received a response so ardent to his lofty 
conception, Savonarola addressed himself with char- 
acteristic decision of purpose to the means necessary 
for its fulfilment in actual fact. His sermons even on 
political subjects rang with solemn pressing calls to 



THE DREAM OF A THEOCRACY iii 

the people to rise to the height o£ the great idea 
which, at his challenge, they had so warmly embraced. 
He made it abundantly clear that his zeal in labour- 
ing for the institution of a free government was 
actuated solely by a desire to ensure the triumph of 
morality and religion, which are the stable foundar 
tions of national well-being. He summoned the citi4 
zens of Florence to put down vice with a rigorous 
hand, to sweep obscenity from their streets, to reform 
their manners, lay aside their luxury, their indecent 
attire and gaudy finery, and, instead of pursuing 
frivolity and pleasure, to give themselves to the wor- 
ship and service of God. He even went so far as to 
exhort the magistrates to bring all the harlots into 
some public place with the sound of trumpet, to punish 
gamblers, to pierce the tongues of blasphemers, to pro- 
hibit balls and dancing — injunctions which betrayed a 
touch of that ascetic severity from which he never was 
quite free. 

Thus from the pulpit of the Duomo he strove to\ 
inaugurate the ideal polity which he conceived himself J 
charged by a Divine warrant to set up. With the 
political excitement there was now blended a strange 
religious fervour, and politics and religion were curiously 
mingled together in the sermons which the crowds 
gathered to hear. Those crowds, indeed, swelled to 
an unprecedented degree, and within the Cathedral 
wooden galleries had to be erected in the form of 
an amphitheatre, to provide a larger amount of room. 
Not only from the city itself, but from the country 
round, men and women of all grades hurried in the 
early morning and stood waiting in the piazza, filling 
the space between the lofty but then unfinished fa9ade 



112 SAVONAROLA 



/of 



the great building and the quaint octagonal diurch 
j of San Giovanni Battista — long so familiarly known 
I as the Baptistery — with its black and white marbles 
j and its marvellously embellished bronze doors, which 
t Michael Angelo declared worthy to be the gates of 
^lr*aradise ; while Giotto's Campanile, with its ricli 
colour, delicate tracery, and matchless grace, rose 
" fair and light as a lily stalk " against the steel-blue 
sky. It was bewildering to see that mass of people, 
says Burlamacchi, coming with jubilee and rejoicing 
to the sermon as if to a wedding. Then, when the 
doors were opened and the throng pressed in, " the 
silence was great in church, each one going to his 
place ; and he who could read, with a taper in his 
hand, read the service and other prayers. And thougli 
many thousand people were there collected together, 
no sound was to be heard, until the arrival of the 
children, who sang hymns with so much sweetness 
that heaven seemed to liave opened. Thus they waited 
three or four hours till the Padre entered the pulpit." 
Very seldom did the huge and eager assembly fail to 
experience some vivid sensation. Sometimes Savon- 
arola was himself carried away by an overmastering 
ecstasy of spiritual rapture, and on such occasions 
astonishing effects were produced on his audience. 
Not only the common people, but the educated, persons 
of rank, artists, and men of letters, betraj^ed signs 
of the deepest emotion, and gave way to sobbing and 
tears ; and Lorenzo Violi, tlie sliortliaiul writer who 
took notes of the sermons, was obliged repeatedly 
to explain, " At this point I was overcome with weep- 
ing and could not go on." Not a few, as they left 
the church, tore otf their ornaments, and gave them 



THE DREAM OF A THEOCRACY 113 

as an offering to God, or took tlicni to the magistrates 
for the use of the State. As for the orator himself, 
the exhaustion resulting from such extreme tension 
of feeling not seldom laid him prostrate for several 
days. 

It is not surprising that at such a period, and 
under emotions so intense and overpowering, there 
should have arisen stories of supernatural wonders 
and amazing appearances as frequently manifest while 
Savonarola was preaching. It was said that some 
beheld angels hovering over him ; that the Virgin 
Mary herself was seen blessing him with uplifted 
hand while he pronounced the benediction on the 
worshipping assembly ; that palms of martyrdom 
crowned his head. Such tales of marvel, thouo:h due, 
no doubt, to the high-strung excitement to which 
the imagination of his hearers was often wrought, 
are yet a testimony to the seraphic fervour and sacred 
passion with which he spoke; and they reveal the 
feeling entertained of the rare sanctity and greatness 
of the man. So much of truth, at least, must lie 
behind ; for legends, as has been said, are like the 
clouds that gather upon the mountain summits, and 
show the height and take the shapes of the peaks 
about which they cling. 

The legislative measures he proposed for the govern- 
ment of the city, and the rules he laid down for the 
private and social life of the people, were enforced 



in the name of God, whose commands he unhesi-s' 
tatingly asserted them to be. Preaching, as he 
most frequently did, from the books of the Old 
Testament, he assumed a tone of authority in giving 
to the warnings, threatenings, and appeals of the 
8 



114 SAVONAROLA 

Psalms and Prophets an interpretation directly applic- 
able to his own time and to the state of things around 
him. They were all as plainly and intentionally ad- 
dressed to Florence, to Rome, to Italy, as they had 
been to Israel and Judah. And in support of his 
title to speak as an organ of prophetic illumination, 
he again and again called attention to the predictions 
uttered by him which had been signally, and even 
literally, fulfilled. He made striking use also of the 
visions which had been granted to him in hours of 
spiritual brooding and prayer, when the gleam of 
some momentous truth or the forecast of some critical 
event broke in upon his entranced soul. Indeed, from 
this point onward his references to those visions, and 
his dependence on them as a ground of authority, 
became a more predominant feature in his preaching. 
, "In those visions Savonarola himself had a profound 
( belief. Time and the knowledge gained by historical 
I research have amply vindicated the honest purity and 
isimplicity of his character; and the theory is no 

(longer rationally tenable, that he was driven by vanity 
or by love of power to take refuge in the deliberate 
pretension to prophetic enlightenment and super- 
natural gifts. It does seem strange that a man of 
such strong intellectual force, wide learning, and 
clear practical sagacity should have carried hi& 
faith in Divine apparitions and revelations so far as 
he did. We have to remember, however, the deep 
/mystical tendency of his nature, observable even in 
' his youth, which grew with the growing years, 



"t nj 



I fostered by many a long vigil and by much fasting 
\^and prayer. We have to remember the traditions 
of monastic piety amid which his religious life had 



THE DREAM OF A THEOCRACY 115 

mainly developed, and also the peculiar influences 
of his age. We can conceive how, out of his pro- 
found mysticism and his strenuous endeavour to get 
into vital touch with the Divine mind and will, his 
conviction of actual communications from heaven was 
born. And we can see, moreover, how this conviction, 
once formed, was sustained and confirmed in his view 
by the ready and reverent acceptance by the people 
of all that he declared as divinely revealed to his 
soul. It was an extravagance of the religious imagin- 
ation, into which he glided by the slow but steady ^ 
pressure of the atmosphere of inward longing and outrj 
ward environment in which he lived. Yet how sincere 
he was in it all is sufficiently evident from the style 
of argument he employs in his Compendium Bevela- 
tionum, the singular work in which the credentials of 
his prophetic mission were offered to the world. ""^ 
This work was published in August 1495, at the 
very height of his career, when, after guiding the 
city through its most urgent political difficulties, he 
was in the full current of his labours for the reforma- 
tion of its manners. The book opens with a distinct 
avowal of his power of predicting future events by 
Divine inspiration, God, he asserts, reveals the things 
of the future to those whom He specially chooses — 
in the first place, by infusing a certain supernatural 
light, by means of which the prophet perceives that 
the matters revealed to him are true and proceed 
from God, just as the light of reason makes the 
philosopher certain of his first principles and the 
ordinary man -certain that two and two make four ; 
secondly, by flashing that which He wishes him to 
know and foretell, either directly upon the prophet's 



ii6 SAVONAROLA 

mind, or through the medium of a symbolical vision, 
or by means of words heard, and known to be com- 
municated through the ministry of angels. Having, 
stated these as his fundamental positions, Savonarola 
passes on to speak of Florence as the centre chosen 
by God for the giving forth of His revelations to 
Italy, and of himself as the messenger through whom 
the revelation should be conveyed, adducing in proof 
of his claim the memorable instances in which his 
announcements of the Divine purpose had been verified 
by the actual course of events. But the extraordinary 
part of the work is that in which he describes his 
visionary journey to Paradise, a journey which he 
pictures himself as having undertaken as the ambas- 
sador of Florence to the Virgin Mary at the court 
of heaven. The whole narrative is an allegorical 
fancy, the gist of which had already been given in 
a sermon in May 1495. Its chief interest consists 
in the dialogue which the writer represents as having 
taken place between himself and the Tempter, who 
meets him in the guise of a holy hermit, and who 
suggests to him every possible objection to the con- 
fidence he has in the possession of a supernatural 
gift. Is he not misguided by a certain simplicity, 
or trifling with God's truth in his predictions ? If 
he is not a deceiver, is he not moved by a spirit of 
melancholy, or by a disordered imagination? Or is 
he not himself deceived by the power of the devil ? 
Is he not professing to reveal things which it is not 
given to mortal man to know, or making a cunning 
use of the knowledge he has gained by his friendship 
with politicians and princes ? and so on. One by 
one, with painstaking care and directness, Savonarola 



THE DREAM OF A THEOCRACY 117 

endeavours to refute those objections and to establish 
his honesty and good faith. At one point he makes 
the solemn asseveration, " If ever I have used decep- 
tion in my preaching, may God blot me out of the 
Book of Life." There is high colouring in the scene 
of the heavenly court and the jewelled throne on 
which the Virgin appears as the Protecting Saint of 
Florence; and the descriptions given have a graphic 
vigour and picturesqueness of detail which not seldom 
remind the reader of Dante's Faradiso. The book 
closes with a Divine message to the Florentine people, 
predicting that after trials and tribulations their city 
would come forth more glorious than before. 

Savonarola renewed the defence of his prophetic 
claims in another tractate published two years later, in 
1497, entitled Dialogo delta Veritd Profetica. It was 
an attempt to state and justify the grounds of certainty 
he had in the truth of his revelations ; but the 
argument drew him into a labyrinth of logical 
subtleties which proved the extreme difficulty of 
establishing on a clear basis of reason the peculiar 
authority he assumed as the chosen medium of Divine 
communications. 

It is not necessary at the present day to question the 
reality of Savonarola's forecasts of future events. 
There is abundant testimony from his own times to 
the striking and repeated anticipation of changes in 
the civil and political affairs of Italy which ere long 
actually transpired. Yet when we take into account 
the clear-seeing, watchful alertness of his mind, his 
exceptional insight into the moral forces at work in 
his generation, his large grasp, derived from constant 
study of Scripture history and prophecy, of the 



Ii8 SAVONAROLA 

principles which underlie the workings of Providence, 
together with his comparative freedom from the 
blinding effect of partisan passion and prejudice, it 
need not astonish us that he should have been able to 
utter many predictions which after events proved true. 
All this is perfectly intelligible apart from the influence 
of any supernatural insight, into the belief of which 
he was unconsciously deluded by his own mystic ideas. 

The great mass of the people, however, were power- 
fully impressed by the claims he advanced, and large 
numbers looked up to him with profoundest reverence 
as their guide. Nor was it only in the pulpit that 
Savonarola exercised his power. Intent on his theo- 
cratic conception, he laboured to relieve the unjust 
burdens under which many in the city were suffering. 
Where Christ rules, the needy and the hard-pressed 
should be helped ; and, acting on that principle, he 
threw himself into the work of establishing the Monte 
di Pietd, an institution designed to deliver the poorer 
classes from the excessive exactions of the Jewish 
money-lenders. He made strenuous efforts to procure 
subscriptions for this purpose, and succeeded also in 
getting regulations passed, which, while liberating 
borrowers from their oppressive debts, provided for the 
obtaining of loans at a moderate and reasonable rate of 
interest. 

Education also was a subject to which he devoted 
special attention, his aim being to give it a more 
earnest moral and religious character. He adopted 
every means in his power to purify the literature used 
in the schools, and to withdraw the rising generation 
from frivolous pursuits and sensuous pleasures. 

Thus, by ceaseless activities of various kinds, the 



THE DREAM OF A THEOCRACY 119 

indefatigable reformer strove to infuse a higher spirit 
into the life of the city, and to advance the sway of 
Christ as Lord and King of the State. His enthusiasm 
communicated itself to multitudes in every rank of 
society, and ere long his consecrated exertions, which 
involved a severe tax on his strength, bore fruit in a 
complete and astonishing change in the manners of the 
Florentine people. Libertines abandoned their vices ; 
roystering youths became decorous and devout; the 
theatres and taverns were emptied ; card-playing and 
dice-throwing disappeared; women laid aside their 
costly ornaments and flaunting attire, and dressed 
plainly ; fasts were observed with new solemnity, and 
grew so frequent that the butchers were almost ruined. 
Hymns were sung in the streets instead of the 
licentious songs and carnival choruses hitherto so 
popular. Artisans occupied their leisure ^^urs in 
reading the Bible and religious books. The churches 
overflowed, and shops were closed during the time of 
preaching. Bankers and merchants were constrained 
to restore the gain unjustly acquired. Deadly enemies 
were reconciled. A fervour of charity seemed to be 
universal, and the money which otherwise would have 
been squandered on luxury and finery, or lost at the 
gambling -table, now found its way into the alms-boxes 
for behoof of the poor. There was, moreover, an 
extraordinary rush for admission into the convents. 
In San Marco itself the number of monks increased 
from fifty, as at first, to over two hundred and thirty, 
and among the newly enrolled brethren were the young 
sons of several noble families, as well as men of mature 
age who had won distinction in literature, science, or 
politics. 



I20 SAVONAROLA 

This extraordinary moral and religious reforma^on 
was not altogether superficial. Considering the life- 
long influence for good exerted on the men who 
supported Savonarola in his higher work among the 
people, and who cherished his memory and adhered to 
his principles after he was gone, — many of them men of 
real weight of character and of more or less note in 
learning or public aflkirs, — it is a reasonable conclusion 
that there must have been hundreds of others, scattered 
through society, whose lives were refined and purified 
by the great movement of which he was the heart and 
soul. There must have been a very powerful and 
genuine revival of godliness. Nevertheless, it has to be 
admitted that the outward amendment, everywhere 
so patent, did not represent a correspondingly marked 
and widespread spiritual vitality. Events gradually 
showed that the yoke of religious austerity Savonarola 
imposed was one which the Florentines were not 
prepared by their own living convictions to sustain. 
The standard of conduct on which he insisted was too 
monastic; it left scant room for the healthy play of 
natural human feeling. There was too much repression 
in the system of things which he sought to inaugurate. 
It was too dependent for its practical efficiency on the 
influence of legal prohibitions, and more especially on 
the coercion of supernatural fears. It was an attempt 
to enforce by the sheer pressure of authority a degree 
of morality which could only be genuinely attained by 
free personal choice. And while the magic of his 
eloquence, the prestige of his mission as the spokesman 
of Heaven, the admiration and gratitude evoked by his 
priceless services in saving and reconstructing the 
Republic, enabled him to wield a dictatorial ascendancy 



THE DREAM OF A THEOCRACY 121 

and to effect a marvellous reform in the habits and 
manners of the citizens, yet to a large extent the change 
thus wrought lacked the elements necessary to give it 
solid depth and reality. It would be far from true 
to say that the religious and moral revival which he 
produced was a sudden flame that flashed up for a 
moment and then went out. Yet the admission must 
be made that in a certain measure it was spasmodic 
and forced. 

Savonarola had ventured on a daring experiment in 
attempting to convert the Florentine commonwealth 
into a theocracy, and to set up the Kingdom of Heaven 
in the very heart of Italy ; and undoubtedly his success 
in moulding the lives of the Florentine people into an 
apparent harmony with his bold conception is astound- 
ing. It illustrates the moral fascination of his character 
and the commanding power of his personality. His 
theocracy was a lofty dream, and with an entire un- 
selfishness and a purity of motive which it is impossible 
to doubt, he laboured to get it realised. But the task 
was beyond his strength in the form in which he 
struggled for its accomplishment, or by the means on 
which he so largely relied. Human nature cannot be 
pressed into goodness as he expected to press it. As 
Calvin afterwards found in Geneva, so Savonarola 
found in Florence, a strong and noble mind, by positive 
mastery of high-purposed will, and brandishing the 
terrors of retributive judgment, may impose its own 
rigid rules of life on a body of people, and may obtain 
a remarkable degree of visible acquiescence and sub- 
mission, and yet fail to inspire permanently more 
than a limited proportion of the mass with its own 
grand and vital ideas. Savonarola deserves conspicuous 



122 SAVONAROLA 

honour, and it should be frankly conceded. He did a 
splendid spiritual work in his day; he kindled the 
higher life in many hearts in the city and provinces 
around ; he stirred the Church to a new sense of its 
responsibility ; he made religion a mightier and more 
living force than it had been for several generations. 
But he was betrayed into a flight of pious extravagance 
when he sought to drill Florence into subjection to 
Christ's law and to regenerate its society by the 
austere methods of asceticism. 



CHAPTEE XIY 

The Burdens and Perils of Power 

Savonarola had now reached the climax of his great- 
ness. He was the leading spirit in Florence, and in 
1495 the political, social, and religious life of the city 
was controlled by his forceful, strenuously earnest 
mind. His sway was an exalted dictatorship, animated 
by a righteous purpose and by a disinterested regard 
for the public weal. Yet in that season of triumph, 
possessing almost absolute power, the great Friar was 
acutely conscious of the tremendous difficulties of his 
position and of the task he had taken in hand. While 
the citizens crowded round his pulpit, rejoicing in their 
restored freedom, and eager to honour the man to 
whose exertions their improved liberal government 
was due, he was weighed down by a profound sadness 
in presence of the corruptions in society which had yet 
to be overcome, and the intractable elements and tem- 
pers with which he had to deal. There was still the 
note of warning in his sermons, still the old dominant 
thought of the scourge that must fall ere the Church 
and Italy should be renewed. There was also a new 
note, now for the first time heard, the note of dark 
foreboding as to his own personal danger and fate. 
Amid all the admiration lavished upon him, there were 



124 SAVONAROLA 

not wanting signs of impatience at his interference in 
public affairs. Political jealousy it was inevitable that 
he should incur, and complaints began to be raised 
that he was stepping beyond his province. More- 
over, his stringent measures for the suppression of 
immorality and frivolity were a cause of grievous 
offence. 

/ Savonarola had to share the experience of all ad- 
/vanced reformers who have endeavoured to remove 
/ abuses and to regenerate and purify the life of their 
I age. Detraction, envy, and opposition — at first subtly 
1 veiled, but gradually becoming more open and pro- 
\nounced — assailed him ; and he soon found it necessary 
to defend the part he was taking in politics and public 
life. In one memorable sermon, to which reference 
has already been made, he pictured himself under the 
figure of a youth who left home and launched forth on 
the sea to fish, and was carried far out on the waters, 
beyond sight of port, bitterly bewailing his fate. He 
had been led from the liberty and quiet he craved for 
by the desire to preach and in the hope of winning 
souls, but the Lord had brought him out on the high 
seas, with no harbour in view, difficulties on every side, 
tribulations and tempests gathering before his eyes, 
and the wind driving him farther forth into the deep. 
"O Lord," he cried, "whither hast Thou led me? 
Through my desire to save souls for Thee, I am come 
into a place from which I can no longer return to my 
rest. ... I see in all directions war and discord com- 
ing upon me. You at least, my friends, the chosen of 
God, for whom I afiiict myself day and night, have 
pity upon me ! Give me flowers, as the Canticle says, 
' for I am sick of love.' The flowers that I ask for are 



BURDENS AND PERILS OF POWER 125 

good works, and I only yearn for you that ye please 
God and save your souls." He had not, he averred, 
thrust himself forward, but had been carried on in the 
work he was doing by the constraint of circumstances 
and the will of Heaven, his one aim the eternal well- 
being of the Florentine people. And as for personal 
aggrandisement — not that, but something far different 
was the recompense he looked for in the enterprise on 
which he had embarked. " What reward, O Lord," he 
cried, " shall be granted in the life to come to him who 
is victorious in a battle such as this ? That which the 
eye cannot see, the ear cannot hear — eternal blessed- 
ness. And what the reward granted in this life ? 
* The servant shall not be greater than his master,' 
answers the Lord. ' Thou knowest that after preach- 
ing I was crucified; so martyrdom shall befall thee 
also.' " Then, with a thrill of consecrated passion in 
his voice, he pleaded, " O Lord, Lord, grant me, I pray 
Thee, this martyrdom, and make me ready to die for 
Thee, as Thou hast died for me. Already the knife is 
sharpened for me. But the Lord tells me. Wait yet for 
a little while, so that the things may come which have 
to follow, and then thou shalt use that strength which 
shall be given thee." 

This presentiment of his tragical end, at the very\ 
height of his popularity and power, indicates his know- 1 
ledge of elements of hostility at work around him.) 
The spirit of faction is never long asleep, and soon it 
became evident that discord was being fomented among 
particular sections of the citizens. New party names 
were heard in Florence. The followers of Savonarola, 
who had come to be familiarly spoken of as the 
Frateschi, and who were decidedly in the majority and 



126 SAVONAROLA 

included the devout and honest-minded of all classes, 
were now ridiculed as Piagnoni — the Weepers. His 
most implacable opponents earned by their fierce ran- 
cour the title of Arrahhiati — the Maddened, the Furious. 
They were chiefly men of wealth and rank, who 
schemed for the restoration of an aristocratic republic, 
such as Florence had possessed in the days preceding 
the Medici rule. They were the sworn foes of the 
Medici, by whom their influence had been supplanted, 
but they were equally inflamed against Savonarola as 
the founder of a popular government which they de- 
tested. There was a violent section of this party, con- 
sisting principally of dissolute and turbulent youths, 
who somewhat later came into notoriety as the Com- 
pagnacci — the Evil Companions ; and by none were 
the politics of Savonarola, his religious teaching, and 
especially the decorous mode of life he enforced, re- 
garded with more vehement aversion. At the opposite 
extreme from the Arrabbiati stood the Bianchi — the 
Whites, the radicals of the day, who objected to the 
limited franchise of Savonarola, but acquiesced in his 
polity generally as favourable to liberty. More numer- 
ous, and far more dangerous because of the secrecy of 
their proceedings, were the Bigi, or Greys, the adherents 
of the Medici, who, though indebted to Savonarola for 
the amnesty which had enabled them to live in peace 
and safety in the city, repaid his generosity by plotting 
his downfall and treacherously intriguing for Piero de 
Medici's return. 

The enmity of the Arrabbiati was revealed at an 
early stage. While the first provisionally appointed 
Accopiatori were still in power but unable to act, 
Filippo Corbizzi, a declared opponent of Savonarola 



BURDENS AND PERILS OF POWER 127 

and of the popular institutions he was advocating, was 
elected by a sort of accident as Gonfaloniere, and at 
once lent his aid to the aristocratic party's designs. 
He convoked in the Palazzo a council of theologians 
and ecclesiastics, and laid before them a proposal to 
call the Prior of San Marco to account for his intrusion 
into business which politicians should be left to arrange. 
Savonarola was sent for, and on his appearance was 
assailed by a storm of abuse, in which the chief part 
was taken by Tommaso da Rieti, an acute little friar, 
head of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella, 
who delivered a harangue on the text that no man 
warring for God entangles himself with secular aiFairs. 
Savonarola listened patiently till his accuser had 
finished, and then calmly said in reply that now he 
found fulfilled the words, " My mother's children have 
risen up against me ; " that he was grieved to see his 
fiercest foe clothed in the robe of San Dominic — a robe 
that called to mind the number of good and saintly 
men, not forgetting the founder of the order himself, 
who, while wearing it, had been concerned in afiairs of 
State, such as Cardinal Latino, St. Peter Martyr, and 
St. Antonino ; that it was no crime in a monk to be 
mixed up with the doings of the world, unless he had 
nothing higher in view than a worldly end and no re- 
gard for the good of religion. He closed by daring any 
of those present to quote a single passage of the Bible 
which condemned the support of a free government for 
the sake of helping the triumph of religion and moral- 
ity. The assembly could only answer by demanding a 
plain proof of his Divine warrant for preaching as he 
did. With the simple retort that he had spoken openly 
before the world, and now had nothing more to add, 



128 SAVONAROLA 

he turned abruptly away, and the meeting broke up, a 
failure. 

About the same time he received a mandate from 
Rome directing him to proceed to Lucca and preach 
there the sermons for Lent. This also was the work 
of the Arrabbiati, who were resolved to have him re- 
moved or silenced. Savonarola himself was prepared 
to submit to the Papal decree, believing, as he avowed 
in one of his sermons, that it behoved him to obey 
orders and not create scandal. He was just then, how- 
ever, in the full current of his political and reforming 
activity, and the voice of Florence was loud in protest 
against the very suggestion of his removal. It was 
felt that he could not be spared at such a juncture, that 
his presence was indispensable to the construction of 
the new government and the consolidation of the 
Republic. The Signory espoused his side, and the 
Council of the Ten were especially urgent in sending 
remonstrances to Rome and endeavouring to procure 
the recall of the Papal Brief. Alexander vi. was at 
last persuaded to yield, influenced largely by fear of 
political complications, Charles of France being still at 
Naples, and ready to resent any offence given to his 
allies, as the Florentines continued to be. Thus Savon- 
arola was permitted to remain at his post and to 
pursue the course of public usefulness on which he had 
been launched. But his sentiment of obedience re- 
ceived a shock. He had obtained an insight into the 
doings and intrigues of the Papal Court, and into 
the thoroughly secular and often unworthy motives 
which prompted the issue and the withdrawal of Papal 
decrees. 

Neither the harassment of opposition nor the weight 



BURDENS AND PERILS OF POWER 129 

of care, however, could quench the ardour of that un- 
flinching, masterful mind. Sustained by the conscious- 
ness of his mission and the purity of his own high 
aims, Savonarola went on with his work, preaching, 
counselling, organising, extending his regulative power 
over the common life of the city, confronting difficulties 
and antagonisms, and living for months at a pressure 
which again and again brought on a collapse of 
physical strength. Yet never did he enjoy in fuller 
measure the fervent goodwill and devotion of the 
people at large. In spite of all the plots of hostile 
factions, his was the only leadership which the 
mass of the Florentines would consent to obey. To 
the well-meaning and honestly disposed he was a 
source of uplifting spiritual power, stirring them to 
higher aims and thrilling them with a sense of the 
great things for which it was worthy to live and strive. 
His very presence, with the air of lofty purpose about 
him, was itself a stimulus to the better nature of all 
earnest citizens, and helped them to realise with glow- 
ing intensity the nobility of the life of faith. In 
those days the regal spirit of the man shone out 
with inspiring brilliance, and, like Schiller's hero in 
Wcdlenstein, wherever he moved he created the 
wonderful. 

During the summer of 1495 the shadow of trouble 
again hovered over the city. Charles viii. was now 
marching north on his return from Naples, with Piero 
de Medici in his train. His expedition had been a sort 
of triumphal progress, and he had conquered the 
Neapolitan kingdom almost without striking a blow. 
His unexampled success, however, aroused an alarm 
among the princes of Italy, which was shared by the 
9 



130 SAVONAROLA 

rulers of several foreign States. Ludovico of Milan, 
who had turned round and abandoned his friendship 
for France, Pope Alexander vi., Venice, Ferdinand of 
Spain, and the Emperor Maximilian I. entered into 
a coalition against Charles, and formed the famous 
" Holy League," professedly for the defence of Christen- 
dom against the Turks and the preservation of the 
rights of the chair of St. Peter, but really for the 
expulsion of the " barbarians " from Italy. Charles 
had thus been compelled to retire, and it was expected 
that he would pass through the territory of Florence 
on his northward route. The Florentines, though still 
true to their alliance with the King, and refusing to 
join the League, had reason to dread his interposition 
on behalf of Piero's restoration. The Medici party 
were on the alert, waiting to seize their opportunity, 
but the friends of the new constitution furnished them- 
selves with arms, and resolutely prepared to protect 
their liberties. Savonarola, while encouraging their 
patriotic zeal, counselled them to patience, and above 
all things, unity ; then, he promised, victory should be 
theirs, even if all the world were against them. As 
Charles and his army drew near, his curt and churlish 
treatment of the ambassadors sent by the Republic 
still further darkened the aspect of affairs. Once more 
Savonarola was induced to step forward and meet 
the difficulty. He had written several letters to the 
King since his former interviews with him, acknow- 
ledging him as the chosen instrument of God, and 
claiming the right in God's name to keep him faithful 
to his covenant with Florence. Now he went to 
Charles in person at Poggibonsi, on the road to Siena, 
and spoke in the same high tone, telling the King that 



BURDENS AND PERILS OF POWER 131 

he had incurred the wrath of God by neglecting that 
work of reforming the Church which he had been 
charged to undertake. " This time," he said, " you 
will escape the danger which threatens you, but if you 
again disregard the command which He repeats through 
me, His unworthy servant, and still refuse to take up 
the work which He commits to you, I warn you that 
He will punish you with far more terrible misfortunes, 
and will choose another in your place." The result of 
this solemn and authoritative remonstrance was that 
Charles passed on, leaving the Florentines unmolested, 
and Savonarola established for himself a new title to 
public favour. 

The emergency, however, lent additional weight to 
one of the many cares which lay upon his heart — the 
risk that menaced the Republic so long as there existed 
the possibility of calling a Parlamento. This assembly 
of the whole body of the citizens, convened in the 
piazza at the sound of the great bell, had all the 
appearance of a thoroughly democratic institution, but 
was liable to abuse, and had repeatedly been abused, in 
furthering the designs of tyranny. Savonarola saw in 
it a danger to all really free and enlightened govern- 
ment, and the fear of its being employed by the ad- 
herents of the Medici in the interests of Piero impelled 
him to labour for its abolition, and thereby save 
Florence from the caprice of the mob, who might at 
any moment be cajoled by delusive promises or cowed 
by threats. Indeed, his apprehensions on this point 
roused him to speak from the pulpit in language which 
was startlingly excessive in its vehemence. He urged 
the people never to allow a Parlamento to assemble, as 
it was nothing else than a means of taking power out 



132 SAVONAROLA 

of their bands. If a new law was to be made, the 
Grand Council could make it. The Signory, he said, 
on entering office should be obliged to take an oath 
not to call a Parlamento, and heavy penalties should be 
inflicted on any person who should secretly attempt to 
call one, — " if he be of the Signory, let his head be 
struck ofl"; if he be not of it, let him be declared a 
rebel, and his goods confiscated." Nay, if the Signory 
as a body should endeavour to summon a Parlamento, 
the moment the}^ appear in front of the Palazzo " any 
man may cut them to pieces without being guilty of 
sin." This sermon was delivered on 28th July 1495, 
and early in the following month a law was passed 
declaring that no Parlamento should in future be 
held. 

That the risk which moved Savonarola to such 
violence of speech was not imaginary, was proved soon 
afterwards, when Piero de Medici, assisted by the 
Italian League and encouraged by the intrigues of his 
supporters within the city, made an attempt to force 
an entrance into Florence. The enterprise failed 
ignominiously, but it revealed the need of vigorous 
precautions for the security of the new constitution 
and the freedom it conferred. It drew from Savonarola 
one of his most tremendous outbursts of denunciatory 
declamation. Holding the crucifix in his hand, he sent 
his voice pealing out over the Cathedral, declaring that 
whosoever would seek to bring back the Medici to 
Florence should be put to death. " Will you who pay 
no respect to Christ, have respect to private citizens ? 
Do justice, I tell you. Ofl" with his head ! Even were 
he the chief of the first family in the city, oflf, I say, 
with his head! . . . Trust in nought but the Great 



BURDENS AND PERILS OF POWER 133 

Council, which is the work of God and not of man, and 
whosoever would change it, or set up a tyrant, or place 
the government in the hands of private citizens, let 
him be accursed of the Lord for ever." 

Such words of fierce severity may be ascribed to the 
natural morbid excitability of Savonarola's tempera- 
ment, strained to its utmost pitch by the exacting 
and long-continued tax upon his nervous energy and 
mental powers. At the same time it is possible to see 
in them a striking evidence of his irrepressible passion 
for liberty. 



CHAPTER XV 

The Hand of the Pope 

Among the supporters of the League formed to drive 
Charles Vlii. and his army out of Italy there was none 
more energetic than Pope Alexander Yi. He had 
incurred the special enmity of Charles by first profess- 
ing to favour his claims to Naples and then turning 
against him, and now his position was most seriously 
imperilled by the influence of Charles in Italian politics. 
The French King held over him the threat of summon- 
ing a General Council to investigate his title to the 
Papacy. For, shrewd and capable administrator as 
Alexander vi. was, and endowed with certain qualities 
which made him superficially popular, his character, 
as judged even by Roman Catholic historians, was a 
discredit to religion and to the pontifical throne. His 
life was one of unrestrained sensuality, marked both 
in private and public by an absence of all moral feel- 
ing ; bribery was a means of power which he used with 
the most amazing eflfrontery ; with systematic unscru- 
pulousness he schemed and intrigued for the worldly 
advancement of his illegitimate sons and daughters, 
and openly tolerated in their conduct criminalities 
and vices which were a scandal to Italy, and which 
have rendered the family name of Borgia a byword 

134 



THE HAND OF THE POPE 135 

for generations. "Thus," says Dr. Pastor, "he who 
should have been the guardian of his time, saving all 
that could be saved, contributed more than any other 
man to steep the Church in corruption." 

This was the man who most dreaded the French 
King, and who, now that the latter was on his retreat, 
was most determined to break the force of his power 
in Italy. The chief obstacle to his designs lay in the 
attitude of Florence, which still persisted in holding 
aloof from the League and adhering to its alliance with 
France. And Florence was dominated by the influence 
of Savonarola, through whose unflinching advocacy 
that alliance was upheld. He still clung to his pious 
hallucination that the frivolous, vacillating, dissolute 
King, was God's chosen instrument for the reformation 
of the Church. Accordingly, it was now upon Florence, 
and upon Savonarola as the ruling spirit there, that 
the Pope, with the eager connivance of Ludovico of 
Milan, instigated the Italian powers to turn their com- 
bined hostility. It was decided that every means 
should be employed to detach Florence from the side of 
France and compel it to join the League ; and so an 
effort of repression, originating in political rather 
than religious causes, was directed against the main 
supporter of the French alliance, the Prior of San 
Marco. 

Alexander's purpose to silence and, if possible, 
extinguish this influential opponent of his policy, was 
confirmed by highly-coloured reports of Savonarola's 
denunciations of the Roman Court and its doings which 
were carried to his ears by the enemies of the Florentine 
preacher. He set to work with dexterous subtlety. On 
25th July 1495 he addressed a Brief to Savonarola, in 



136 SAVONAROLA 

which in friendly terms he commended him as one 
well known for his zeal as a worker in the Lord's vine- 
yard, and then, referring to his predictions of future 
events as coming not from man but from God, he 
summoned him in virtue of his pastoral authority to 
repair at once to Rome and give a more full and direct 
account of the revelations he had received. Savon- 
arola's friends, however, were suspicious of the object 
aimed at by this apparently mild injunction. They 
realised the danger to their popular government and 
freedom involved in the attempt to remove the guide 
of the whole movement from Florence, and they were 
afraid of a plot to have him seized or assassinated by 
the way ; for, indeed, even in the city the adversaries 
of the new order were beginning to show a more deadly 
intention, and Savonarola had to be guarded by an 
armed escort as he passed to and fro between his con- 
vent and the Cathedral. Moreover, his bodily health 
was breaking down, and his emaciation was so extreme 
that he was contemplating retirement for a time from 
the pulpit; and therefore a journey under such con- 
ditions would have been more than he could safely bear. 
All these considerations were anxiously pressed upon 
his attention, and, after weighing them duly, he on 
31st July sent a reply to the Pope requesting to be 
excused from coming to Rome at that particular time. 
He acknowledged the duty of obedience to his ecclesi- 
astical superior, but pleaded the low state of his health 
and the risk to his life from the evil designs of his 
political foes ; and further, he urged that the reformed 
government had not yet taken firm root, and required 
constant assistance, and that therefore, in the judgment 
of all good and wise citizens, his departure would be of 



THE HAND OF THE POPE 137 

great injury to the people, while of little advantage to 
Rome. And for these " true and plain reasons " he 
asked his Holiness to allow him a brief delay. As to 
the explanation of his predictions^concerning the future, 
he promised to send a little book — the Compendium 
Bevelationum, — which he was just getting printed, and 
which would be found to contain all about the matter 
that needed to be known. 

He was taking the rest which his excessive exhaustion 
forced upon him, deputing his trusted disciple Fra 
Domenico da Pescia to preach for him in the Cathedral, 
when, to his astonishment, on the 8th of September a 
new Brief was issued by the Pope, addressed, not to the 
brethren of San Marco, but to the Franciscans of Santa 
Croce, his long-standing rivals and opponents, and 
speaking of him in a tone of alienated aloofness as " a 
certain Fra Girolamo," whose mind had been excited to 
such a pitch of folly that he gave himself out to be a 
prophet and the bearer of a mission from God, without 
being able to prove his claim either by miracles or 
by direct evidence from Holy Scripture. There was 
reason to fear — this Brief of the man who was out- 
raging all the moralities went on to say — lest vice 
should make an entrance into the Church under thfe 
semblance of virtue. The Pope, it continued, could 
forbear no longer. The Fra Girolamo was com- 
manded to refrain from preaching of any kind. 
Moreover, the "scandalous severance" of his convent 
from the Lombard Congregation must cease, and he 
must henceforth bow to the authority of the Lombard 
superior ; and all this under pain of being visited by 
the ban of the Church. 

Savonarola was painfully embarrassed. He was 



138 SAVONAROLA 

unwilling to place himself in an attitude of open 
rebellion against the Pope, yet he knew that the whole 
difficulty was due to the plots of the Arrabbiati and 
Medici parties, who were working through the Pope 
for the restoration of tyranny. He made his reply on 
the 29th of September. It was a defence of his teach- 
ing in view of the reports by which the Holy Father 
had been deceived, and a humble but firm protest 
against the reunion of San Marco with the Lombard 
Congregation. In his doctrine, he said, he had always 
been submissive to the Church, and the events he had 
foretold had come to pass, as many witnesses could 
testify. He argued that the reunion with the Lombard 
friars would only deepen the rancour already existing 
between the two congregations, and give rise to fresh 
disputes. If that reunion was sought in order to 
prevent others from lapsing into his errors, he believed 
he had made it plain that he had not lapsed into any 
error, and hence as the cause was non-existent, neither 
should its effect remain. He recited the services 
he had rendered to Florence in arresting bloodshed and 
destroying dissension in a time of trouble, and in 
establishing religion, morality, and peace ; and he 
besought his Holiness to grant him full acquittal from 
the false charges made against him, concluding with 
the declaration that now and always, as he had often 
repeated, he submitted himself and all his words and 
writings to the correction of the Holy Roman Church 
and " of your Holiness, to whose prayers, prostrate at 
your feet, I most humbly commend myself and all my 
brethren." 

Alexander was a man of astute practical sagacity /and 
on the receipt of this reply he recognised the necessity 



THE HAND OF THE POPE 139 

of proceeding with studied caution. Though annoyed 
for the moment by the Florentine preacher's obstinate 
opposition to his will, he yet deemed it wise not to 
push matters to extremity, but to attain his object, if 
possible, by discreet and diplomatic means. On the 
16th of October he sent another Brief, in which Savon- 
arola was told that serious displeasure had been caused 
at Rome by the disturbances which, it was alleged, his 
teaching had produced in Florence, but that now great 
joy was felt in the assurance, gathered from his letter 
lately received and from the testimony of many 
cardinals, that he was ready, as a good Christian, to 
submit to the Church in all things. Hence the Pope 
began to be persuaded that he had erred rather through 
excess of zeal than through any evil intent. However, 
lest there should be any failure of duty, he was com- 
manded, in the name of holy obedience, to abstain from 
preaching either in public or private, until he was able 
with convenience and safety to appear himself in Rome, 
or until a commission had been sent to Florence. If he 
obeyed this command, all the former Briefs would be 
revoked, and he might live in peace according to the 
dictates of his own conscience. Ere this Brief, which 
from some unexplained cause took a long time to reach 
Florence, was delivered, Savonarola had reappeared in 
the pulpit, and had done his utmost to encourage the 
citizens to resist the expedition of Piero de Medici 
referred to in the previous chapter. It was then that 
he preached that startling sermon which called for the 
death of all who aided or abetted the restoration of 
tyranny. By the time the Brief arrived the danger 
was past, and Savonarola relapsed into silence. 

His position, amid wily manoeuvres to cripple his 



I40 SAVONAROLA 

power and false accusations of creating discord, was 
exceedingly trying. The decree prohibiting him to 
preach he felt to be unjust, and the reasons assigned 
for the prohibition based on slanderous reports. He 
knew that behind the vao-ue charo-es brouoht asrainst 
his teaching it was his political influence that was 
really assailed. But he had confidence in the rectitude 
of his cause, and was resolved not to desert the people, 
who, in spite of all the slanders, looked up to him still 
with unabated trust. The good work was going on, 
and he was anxious not to mar it by the heated ex- 
citement sure to arise if he openly quarrelled with the 
Pope. So he kept quiet for a while, hoping that 
ere long the efforts of friendly intercessors might lead 
to the withdrawal of the restrictions laid upon him. 
He brooded much on the terrible infamies of the Papal 
Court, on the immoral relations and the murders in 
which the Pope himself and the members of his family 
were implicated, and the only remedy for which, as he 
now became convinced, was the callino- of a General 
Council. Several times he was prompted by those 
broodings to write to Charles viii., exhorting him to 
take the steps d^vohdng upon him as God's minister in 
effecting the work of the Church's renovation. 

Gradually, as his strength returned, he became im- 
patient of inaction, and in the enforced abstention 
from his favourite work of preaching sought employ- 
ment for his energies in the reform of the children and 
youth of the city. He had all along shown a warm 
interest in the vouno^: he had endeavoured to miide 
parents and teachers in the books and methods to be 
used in their education; he had been wont at times 
to preach to them, and had arranged a special place for 



THE HAND OF THE POPE 141 

them in the Cathedral. Thus by the attention he gave 
to the rising generation around him he had succeeded 
in gaining their confidence and enthusiasm, and had 
weaned large numbers of them from their vices and 
frivolities. Now he entered upon a systematic effort 
to direct their amusements and to train them in habits 
of religious propriety. The Advent season of 1495 he 
had passed in retirement, but early in 1496, as the 
Carnival drew near, he was impelled to action. That 
annual holiday had long been characterised by scenes 
of wildest revelry. The Florentine boys and young 
men amused themselves with mad frolics and drunken 
f eastings; with forced tolls exacted from passengers 
on the street by barring the way with poles till the 
money was paid ; and with huge bonfires, round which 
they danced and sang, or over which they pelted one 
another with stones, often to the shedding of blood. 
The worst excesses of licence had been in some 
measure restrained since Savonarola's preaching began 
to tell on the manners of the city, but now that the 
great Friar's voice was silenced, the more reckless 
spirits were preparing to celebrate the occasion with 
all the old turbulence and uncurbed rioting. Some- 
how he got hold of a large band of the young Floren- 
tines, and, with the help of his faithful Fra Domenico, 
organised them into guilds, who chose captains for 
themselves. He set up altars in the streets, where the 
boys begged, not money for their banquets, but contri- 
butions for the poor. He gave them hymns and sacred 
lauds to sing — some of them written by himself — 
instead of the indecent rhymes of former days. And 
then, on the last day of the Carnival, he marshalled 
them in a grand procession, and led them through the 



142 SAVONAROLA 

city, chaunting their pious songs, visiting the principal 
churches, and finally depositing the alms-boxes in the 
care of the guardians of the poor. The whole scene 
struck the imagination of the citizens; older people 
joined in the march ; decorum took the place of riotous 
tumult ; and the Carnival of 1496 was felt to be a 
triumph of Savonarola's influence for good. The boys 
themselves were kindled to enthusiasm ; they accepted 
the rules of their new guilds — to avoid masquerades, 
theatres, gambling, dances, and the reading of licentious 
books ; to observe simplicity of manners, conduct, and 
dress ; to go to church, take the sacrament, and keep 
God's commandments. And, according to many wit- 
nesses, a distinct moral improvement became visible 
among the youth of the city. 

Meanwhile the Signory and the Council of Ten had 
been anxiously soliciting the Pope and some friendly 
cardinals, particularly CarafFa of Naples, with the 
view of obtaining for Savonarola the recall of the in- 
hibition from preaching. So far as appears, though no 
formal recall was issued, Alexander at last was induced 
to grant some verbal sanction to his reappearance in 
the pulpit. This is the most probable explanation of 
the resolution passed by the Signory on 11th February 
1496, requesting him to preach the Lent sermons in 
the Cathedral. He readily complied with the request, 
and thus the first period of compulsory silence came to 
an end. 



CHAPTER XYI 

The Uncompromising Witness 

It was amid a scene of intense excitement that, on 
17th February 1496, Savonarola made his first appear- 
ance in the Cathedral pulpit after an interval of several 
months. A jubilant throng gathered round him on 
his way through the streets, and an armed bodyguard 
marched by his side to protect him from secret foes. 
Inside the great building every inch of space was 
occupied ; the vast floor and raised wooden galleries 
were densely crowded with a congregation of old and 
young, all waiting with eager expectancy to hear their 
beloved teacher and guide once more. And there 
again in the pulpit he spoke out boldly, and with 
unshaken assurance of his mission as the messenger 
of God. He declared his loyalty to the Holy Roman 
Catholic Church, and his readiness to submit to its 
decisions both himself and his teaching. But, he said, 
" the Pope cannot command me to do anything which 
is contradictory to Christian charity or the gospel. I 
am convinced that he never will ; but were he to do so, 
I should reply, ' Now you are in error, and no longer a 
good pastor or the voice of the Church.' " As for him- 
self, he did not believe that he was under any obliga- 
tion to obey a command to leave Florence, inasmuch as 

143 



144 SAVONAROLA 

every one knew that his removal was desired solely 
from motives of political hatred, and would bring in- 
jury not only to liberty, but to religion. Were he to 
see clearly that his leaving a city would be attended 
with spiritual and temporal ruin to the people, he 
would refuse to obey the command of any living man 
to quit it, because he should presume that his superior 
in giving the command had been deceived by calumnies 
and lies. He had examined his ways, he avowed, and 
found them pure. Though convinced that the Briefs 
from E-ome were invalid, inasmuch as they were in- 
spired by false reports, he had resolved to be prudent, 
and therefore had so far kept silent. But when he 
saw many of the good growing lukewarm, and the 
wicked more and more bold, he felt himself constrained 
to return to his post. " I would fain remain silent, but 
may not, for the word of God is as a fire in my heart, 
and unless I give it vent, it will consume the marrow 
of my bones. Come then, O Lord, since Thou wouldst 
have me steer through these deep waters, let Thy will 
be done." 

Neither bribes nor terrors, it was obvious, could in 
the slightest affect the tone or the message of that voice 
which was now using its liberty of utterance again. 
Assailed by slander and the tongue of strife, beset by 
the crafty plots of conspirators within the city, and by 
rapacious princes and a worthless Pope outside, with 
his life menaced by poison and by steel, Savonarola 
stood there in the Cathedral pulpit as the uncom- 
promising witness for the claims of God and the 
rights of the people, for the freedom of the reason 
and the conscience of man from all authority save 
that which commends itself as Divine. The hand 



THE UNCOMPROMISING WITNESS 145 

that fain would crush him and through him the hopes 
of Florence, though it had relaxed its grip for a 
moment, was ready, he strongly suspected, to seize 
a pretext for tightening it again; yet he fearlessly 
asserted the eternal obligations of purity, justice, and 
charity on all ranks of men, high as well as low, and 
proclaimed the responsibility of the individual soul to 
God alone. This was the prevailing note of those Lent 
sermons of 1496. With astonishing variety of style, 
incisive vigour of phrase, boldness of imagery, abound- 
ing wealth of illustration, and redoubled fire and rush 
of eloquence, he denounced the vices of Eome, and the 
harlotries and abominations tolerated there; and de- 
claimed against the hypocrisies in religion and the 
compounding by sacraments and ceremonies on par- 
ticular days for general laxity and ungodliness. He 
predicted the woes yet to come upon Italy, the war, 
famine, and pestilence that would scourge its people to 
repentance ; sounded warnings against the enemies of 
the Republic, against the spirit of faction, and all dis- 
honest means of influencing the election of officials 
by one party or another ; described the evils wrought 
by tyrants, whose power meant the extinction of 
virtue and all that was best in the life of man ; — de- 
fending himself also from the aspersions of adver- 
saries, who sought through him to strike at popular 
government and liberty ; and insisting on his own title 
to interpret the Pope's commands in the light of their 
harmony with Christian charity and religion, instead 
of yielding tamely to decrees based on the lying infor- 
mation of detractors. 

Those sermons were founded on texts taken from 
Amos and Zechariah, and the whole population was 
10 



146 SAVONAROLA 

stirred during the weeks in which they were delivered. 
The fame of them spread over Italy and into other 
lands; and in France, Germany, and England the 
powerful voice which was thrilling Florence awoke 
an echo in many hearts. There was an uneasy com- 
motion also among the Italian princes, and several of 
them, such as Ludovico Sforza of Milan and the Duke 
of Ferrara, were constrained to enter into correspond- 
ence with the redoubtable preacher, remonstrating 
with him on the strong reproofs he was hurling 
against the ruling powers, and the political passions 
he was arousing thereby. 

In Florence itself the excitement was varied on 
Palm Sunday by another procession of the children, 
specially arranged by Savonarola to celebrate the 
practical inauguration of the Monte di Pieta. Many 
thousands of boys, all clad in white, and with gar- 
lands on their heads and crosses or palm-branches in 
their hands, marched through the city, carrying a 
tabernacle adorned with a painting of the Lord Jesus 
riding on an ass into Jerusalem. Behind them fol- 
lowed a long array of men, women, and girls, also 
dressed in garb befitting the occasion, and again and 
again the cry was raised by young and old, "Live 
Jesus Christ, our King." The procession ended its 
course at the piazza of San Marco, where the monks, 
crowned with festal wreaths, came forth from the 
convent, and, forming themselves into a ring, moved 
gaily round the Piazza, singing hymns and with steps 
keeping time to the music. After this the zeal of the 
young people on behalf of the Fra Girolamo became 
quite irrepressible ; their mothers could not keep them 
in bed on the mornings when he was to preach, so 



THE UNCOMPROMISING WITNESS 147 

impatient were they to be in their places in the 
Cathedral. Their ardour in good works restrained 
their elders from open sin. " It was a blessed time," 
wrote Landucci of that reign of reverence and pious 
fervour among the children, — "but brief." Yet brief 
as it was in its more directly religious manifestations, 
it planted principles and impulses in the hearts of 
the young Florentines of that generation which gave 
fibre to their character, and prepared many of them 
for noble action in behalf of the Republic amid the 
troubles and conflicts of after years. 

In the midst, however, of all this popularity and 
admiration, there was an immense amount of partisan 
agitation and intrigue. In the shops and market- 
places, and at street corners, men talked passionately, 
and with sharp divergencies of opinion, on the personal 
merits, aims, and policy of their remarkable Friar. 
The Arrabbiati were busy in disseminating suspicions 
of his motives and in undermining his influence on the 
public mind. Attacks were made upon him in writing, 
and tracts and letters full of scurrilous accusations 
were circulated through the city. He was assailed 
in songs and ballads which held up to ridicule his 
sayings and doings. His disciples took up the chal- 
lenge, and replied in pamphlets and verses to the 
insults heaped upon their master. He had still a 
following of overwhelming strength, but as political 
jealousy found time to work, and as the glamour of 
his first successes began to wear off, the opposing and 
dissentient section of the community gained confidence 
to give vent to their hitherto secretly nursed hostility. 
At Rome, again, the Pope was moved to appoint a 
consistory of Dominican theologians to inquire into the 



148 SAVONAROLA 

charges of heresy, schism, and rebellion against the 
Holy See, under which the Friar and his adherents 
had been laid; but the only result of this gathering 
was a Papal message to the Signory to take care that 
in future Savonarola should be more guarded in his 
teaching, and that, "like all the best preachers," he 
should refrain from intermeddling with the things of 
this world and political affairs. 

A visit which he paid to Prato at the close of Lent 
brought him a number of distinguished adherents from 
among the scholars, learned doctors, and professors of 
the Pisan University whom he had an opportunity of 
addressing there. When back again in Florence, he 
published his treatise On the Smiplicity of the Christian 
Life, a work in Avhich, after rebutting the charges 
made against him at Rome, he gave a popular and 
exceedingly readable account of the doctrines of the 
Catholic faith, stripped of the usual theological tech- 
nicalities; and in his sermons on Ruth and Micah 
during the summer he confined himself largely to the 
practical questions of Christian morality. There was 
a lull in the controversy between him and the Pope ; 
and in all probability it was about this time, though 
the date is uncertain, that an effort was made to bribe 
him into compliance with the Pope's wishes and policy 
by the offer of a cardinal's hat. The bearer of the 
offer, according to Burlamacchi, was an influential 
Dominican, who came expressly to Florence to deliver 
the message. Savonarola, however, was not to be 
bribed. When the proposal was laid before him, he 
courteously told the Pope's emissary that if he would 
condescend to be one of his auditors at his next sermon 
he would take means to convey his reply. That next 



THE UNCOMPROMISING WITNESS 149 

sermon, so far as can be ascertained, must have been 
one preached by request of the Signory in the new 
hall of the Greater Council — a noble addition to the 
Palazzo Vecchio which had been erected by the advice 
of Savonarola himself as a suitable meeting-place for 
the legislators of the restored Republic. In the course 
of his sermon there on 20th August 1496, Savonarola 
found occasion to say that the only red hat he wished 
to have was one dyed in the blood of his own martyr- 
dom. ''I seek neither hat nor mitre. I desire only 
that which Thou hast given to Thy saints — death, a 
crimson hat, a hat of blood." 

For many weeks after this Savonarola abstained 
from preaching. The condition of Florence, owing to 
poverty, disease, and famine, was becoming a matter 
of serious concern. The unsettlement of the last two 
years had checked the tide of commercial prosperity. 
The subsidy promised to Charles viii. and the ex- 
penses incurred by the harassing war with Pisa had 
laid a heavy burden on the people, and a bad harvest- 
season had impoverished the peasantry around, who 
came flocking into the city, starving and crying for 
bread. Pestilence broke out and aggravated the 
misery. The wealthier followers of Savonarola dis- 
played most praiseworthy humanity in ministering to 
the wants of their poorer neighbours. Many of them 
gave shelter to the wandering country-folk in their 
own houses ; others were active in succouring the sick 
and distressed, and in watching over them in the 
hospitals. At the same time the powers forming the 
so-called Holy League redoubled their efforts to 
terrorise Florence into abandoning the French alliance. 
Ludovico of Milan, who had first invited the French 



ISO SAVONAROLA 

monarch, now instigated Maximilian i. to make a de- 
scent into Italy and lend his aid in the interests of 
the League ; while the Venetian j9.eet, by blockading 
Leghorn, cut off the Florentine supplies from abroad. 
And in the midst of all these calamities a heavy loss 
was sustained by the death of that brave soldier and 
honest friend of Florentine liberty, Piero Capponi, 
who was killed by a ball in one of the engagements 
of the Pisan War, leaving a blank not easy to fill. 
The Pope on his part was pursuing his resolve to crush 
the Republic and to reinstate Piero de Medici, who 
would be a submissive tool in his hands. The Floren- 
tines had hoped much from Charles viii., but he failed 
them in their hour of need. All this was severely 
trying to Savonarola. It furnished ground for the 
reproachful taunts of his enemies. It encouraged the 
Arrabbiati and the adherents of the Medici to expect 
that his popularity would soon collapse, and the new 
government fall to pieces. 

Yet even in that dark, distressful crisis Florence 
received a fresh illustration of Savonarola's amazing 
and seemingly unfailing power. The Signory had 
again to ask his aid in the public extremity, and in 
a sermon which he preached at their invitation in the 
Cathedral on 28th October, he succeeded to a singular 
degree in reviving the spirit and fortitude of the 
people. Referring to a procession which it was pro- 
posed to hold in bringing the miraculous image of the 
Madonna dell' Impruneta into the city, he expressed 
his confidence in the blessing that would attend such 
an act of penitential devotion. " Form this procession," 
he said, " it will be a goodly thing ; and if you turn 
to God in a right spirit, I believe that some great 



THE UNCOMPROMISING WITNESS 151 

grace will be bestowed upon us, and we shall need to 
stand in fear of none." And just two days afterwards, 
when the long-drawn-out procession was on its way, 
and when the files of white-robed youths and bearded 
men, craftsmen in their various companies and guilds, 
monks and friars cowled and f rocked according to 
their several orders, priests, canons, and dignitaries of 
the Church, were marching slowly, with penitential 
chaunts, through the hunger-stricken throng in the 
narrow streets, bearing the antique cabinet in which 
the figure of the " Pitying Mother " was enshrined, a 
horseman, waving an olive-branch in his hand, came 
galloping across one of the bridges and down the 
Lung' Arno, and dashed right on till he overtook 
the moving crowd. He was the bringer of the 
welcome tidings that a number of ships from France, 
laden with corn and soldiers, had safely arrived 
at Leghorn by favour of a strong wind which had 
kept the blockading fleet at a distance ; and as the 
news spread shouts of joy rang out all along the 
packed thoroughfares ; the bells were set pealing, and 
in the midst of the extraordinary excitement the 
words of Savonarola were remembered, and this addi- 
tional and startling proof of his mysterious insight 
into the secrets of Providence awoke a new passion 
of popular enthusiasm in his favour, and almost for 
the moment paralysed his foes. 

Nevertheless, vexations continued to beset him. 
Copies of letters, purporting to be written by himself, 
and urging the King of France to another invasion of 
Italy, had been circulated by Ludovico of Milan, who 
declared that he had intercepted them on their way to 
Charles. Savonarola pronounced the letters forged, as 



152 SAVONAROLA 

subsequent revelations proved them to have been ; but 
for the time they gave rise to misrepresentations which 
were acutely embarrassing. Once more also the Pope 
struck in with an exceedingly skilful blow. It came in 
the shape of a Brief, dated 7th November, and addressed 
to the Dominican convents in Tuscany, San Marco's 
among them, ordaining that they should all be united 
with the Dominican convents in the province of Eome, 
and so form one Tusco-Roman congregation, the vicar 
of which, in the first instance, was to be nominated by 
his Holiness, and to depend for his authority on the 
Roman Vicar-General, the supreme head of the order. 
The effect of such a decree was to deprive Savonarola 
of the independence which he had hitherto enjoyed, and 
to render him subject to removal from Florence at any 
moment which the superior at Rome might choose. 
Savonarola protested in a pamphlet, entitled An 
Apology for the Congregation of San Marco, in which 
he appealed to the public at large against the injustice 
of the new ordinance, grounded as it was on false 
information, and contrary to charity. He maintained 
that the union with the Roman convents proposed 
would involve the adoption of a less strict rule of 
religious life, and would undo the good work of reform 
which had already been accomplished ; and he pleaded 
that he and his brothers of San Marco could not allow 
themselves to be cowed by threats or excommunications, 
but must be ready to face death rather than submit to 
that which would be poison and ruin to their souls. 
There was a trumpet-blast of revolt against all spiritual 
despotism in his closing words : " When the conscience 
rebels against a command received from a superior, we 
must first resist and humbly correct him, which we 



THE UNCOMPROMISING WITNESS 153 

have already done ; but if that is not enough, then we 
must act like St. Paul, who, in the presence o£ all, 
withstood Peter to his face." This was a daring 
position to take up, and it made abundantly clear the 
probability that if Alexander vi. should insist on the 
enforcement of his decree, he would be openly and 
resolutely defied. 

The Florentine envoy at Eome, supported by many 
influential friends, did all in their power to prevent 
such a result, and for a time definite action was 
suspended. Savonarola went on preaching, and in his 
Advent sermons on Ezekiel he urged the people to 
virtuous living and to gratitude to God for their free 
institutions ; and he called on them to protect their 
liberty, to watch against treachery, to suppress vice, 
and to maintain justice. " Do justice, therefore, 
magnificent Signory ; justice, Lords of the Eight ; 
justice, magistrates of Florence ; justice, men and 
women ; let all cry for justice I " 

There was no further sign from the Pope while these 
sermons were being delivered. Alexander had his own 
perplexities in connection with the adverse fortunes 
attending the military efiforts of the League. Maxi- 
milian, baffled in his attempt to capture Leghorn, had 
retired ingloriously northwards, fuming over the 
jealousies, divided counsels, and general unreliableness 
of his Italian allies. The pressure on Florence was 
accordingly relieved, and in the brighter aspect of 
iflfairs Savonarola again stood out in popular estimation 
as the bulwark of the State, capable not only of holding 
his own against Rome, but also of rescuing the city 
from the machinations of its enemies. 



CHAPTER XYII 

The Pyramid of Vanities 

The year 1497 opened for Savonarola in comparative 
quiet. During its first months he was engaged in 
writing his great theological work, Tlie Triumph of the 
Cross. Fra Domenico da Pescia took his place in the 
Cathedral, and in his sermons there laboured fervently 
to further the progress of religious reform. Moreover, 
the members of the Signory just elected were all 
adherents of Savonarola's own party, the Piagnoni, and 
the social and political interests of the city appeared 
to be in good keeping, more especially as Francesco 
Valori, his zealous supporter, held the office of Gon- 
faloniere. With all his zeal, however, Valori was 
wanting in discretion, and in his anxiety to find a 
means of outnumbering the aristocratic opponents of 
the democratic government, he procured the passing of 
a law by which the age for admission to the Greater 
Council was reduced from thirty to twentj^-four. 
Savonarola's advice was against such a step, and, as he 
feared, the result of the new measure was the intro- 
duction into the Council of some of the most violent 
young men of the Arrabbiati party. This was a section 
of the community which Savonarola's good work had 
failed to touch. He had been remarkably successful, as 



THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES 155 

we have seen, in his influence over the lads and youths of 
the city ; but there were large numbers of the younger 
members of aristocratic families whose hostility to his 
political ascendancy was embittered by fierce irritation 
at the strict yoke of virtue which he imposed. These 
were the Compagnacci, or Evil Companions, already 
described — wild and dissolute young fellows, who had 
now banded themselves together under the leadership 
of the reckless Dolfo Spini, as sworn enemies of popular 
government, and still more as enemies of Savonarola 
and his rigid restraints on the extravagances, pleasures, 
and follies on which they were bent. By admitting 
such men to a power which they were only too glad to 
seize, Valori's new law proved a danger to the common- 
wealth. It brought into the region of public life a 
turbulent element which seriously impeded the healthy 
progress of the State, and henceforth it became more 
possible for the adversaries of Savonarola to thwart his 
beneficent labours and deal him a deadly blow. 

For the time being, however, the distinguished Friar 
remained the dominant power. He had his eye and 
his hand on the leading movements in the city. He 
secured from the Signory more efiective regulations for 
the improvement of manners. Through Fra Domenico 
he perfected the organisation of the children, drilling 
them into a sort of police force or sacred militia, whose 
duty it was to protest against all indecencies, reprove 
vice, and report on any flagrant criminalities which 
they might observe. There can be little doubt that 
those boy-police were betrayed into occasional excesses 
of zeal. Their methods must often have seemed 
inquisitorial and impertinent, and murmurs of com- 
plaint were sure to arise. Yet on the whole it is 



156 SAVONAROLA 

clear that the good effect of the movement amongst the 
young was warmly recognised by the general body 
of honest and well-disposed citizens. It presented a 
favourable contrast to the irreverent and licentious 
tendencies which had hitherto been so patent. 

As the Carnival again approached, Savonarola re- 
solved on a demonstration of an unusually imposing 
character. He would celebrate the festival with a still 
more complete reversal of its profane revelries than 
on the previous year. Florence should be called upon 
to make a full and solemn sacrifice of her vanities. 
Accordingly, for several days the youthful disciples of 
the Friar were sent round the city in companies, 
visiting from door to door, carrying with them baskets, 
and calling for the surrender of all articles which 
might minister to luxury, frivolity, and empty show ; 
and on every house where their demand was met they 
pronounced a benediction. In this way they collected 
an enormous number of objects usually associated with 
the giddy levities and self-indulgent pleasures of exist- 
ence — masks, wigs, and masquerading costumes ; copies 
of loose songs, books of amorous poetry, romances and 
licentious tales ; ornaments and trinkets of all kinds ; 
perfumes, cosmetics, mirrors, veils, and false hair ; 
flutes and guitars ; cards, dice, and gaming-tables ; 
pictures of the nude, portraits of popular beauties, 
indecent works of art. 'These were borne with great 
glee to the Piazza della Signoria, and piled up, tier 
above tier, on a huge octagonal pyramid of wood which 
had been erected there. Then on the closing day of 
the festival an eager throng filled the Piazza. The 
thousands of children, who had marched in procession 
through the streets collecting money for the (^ood Men 



THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES 157 

of San Martino, were gathered in the central space ; 
and while their hymns rose to the sky, and the 
trumpets sounded and the bells rang out, the mighty 
pile was set ablaze, and in whirling smoke and crackling 
flame its mass of miscellaneous contents was reduced 
to ashes. 

Such was the Burning of the Vanities. So absorbing 
was the interest it stirred in the city, that all attempts 
to celebrate the Carnival with the wanton licence of 
old days were effectually arrested. At this modern 
date the spectacle wears a curious and almost fantastic 
aspect ; but in that age, and among Italians whose 
minds were swayed by strong religious excitement and 
at the same time largely imbued with the ideas and 
emotions of mediaevalism, it would be less calculated to 
produce an impression of extravagance. No protest 
was raised against it by the generation which witnessed 
the scene ; and the strictures passed on Savonarola 
for allowing the destruction of literary treasures and- 
works of art, which the affair is surmised to have in- 
volved, are of comparatively recent date. There may 
have been consumed in the great bonfire some stray 
copies of Boccaccio, whose writings were then in high 
favour, or some few pictures which it might have been 
of iitiportance to preserve. Nevertheless it is extremely 
doubtful whether the pile really contained so much that 
was exceptionally valuable in art or literature as the 
critics have been inclined to suppose. Savonarola's cen- 
sures on the indecent character of many of the writings 
and paintings which appealed to the popular taste of his 
day were certainly severe, and he was often intensely 
roused by th econtaminating influence thereby exerted 
on the youth of the city. But he was no rabid icono- 



158 SAVONAROLA 

clast, carried away by a frenzy of fanaticism. Had 
he been so he would never have gained the regard of 
that eminent classical scholar and student, Marsilio 
Ficino, who by this time had become his sincere ad- 
mirer. Fond of 'go^^^ himself, he had among his 
friends the poet Girolamo Benivieni, who composed 
many of the hymns sung by the children in their pro- 
cessions. Though for many years Savonarola had 
neglected the humanities for other and graver pursuits, 
it was not because he despised the humanities, but be- 
cause the force of circumstances and of his own sense 
of duty constrained him to enter on a practical moral 
and religious work which engrossed his thought and 
energy. He believed in the value of poetry as an aid 
to the elevation and refinement of the human mind ; 
and in an essay which he once wrote, " In Apology of 
the Art of Poetry," he gave forth his views as to what 
true poetry should be — a means of so presenting ideas 
by example and figure and rhythmic language as not 
only to enlighten but to enchant, not only to convince 
but to charm. 

Savonarola's genuine appreciation of the prodiuctions 
of literary genius is decisively proved by the exertions 
and sacrifices he made to rescue the Library of the 
Medici, which had fallen into possession of the State 
when the family were expelled and their property con- 
fiscated, but which was now, in the straitened condition 
of the public exchequer, in danger of being sold and 
dispersed to meet some heavy claims. The loss to 
Florence would have been irreparable ; for no library in 
Europe at that time contained so rich and complete a 
collection of Greek and Latin classics. It was Savon- 
arola who interested himself above all others in avert- 



THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES 159 

ing the danger. He induced the brethren of San 
Marco to raise money on the lands belonging to the 
convent, and by this means he was enabled to make a 
payment of two thousand florins and to undertake 
responsibility for a thousand more, with the result 
that there was secured to Florence that precious 
Biblioteca Laurenziana which is to this day one of 
its principal glories. And the transaction took place 
during the very year which witnessed the Burning of 
the Vanities. 

With reference to the painting and sculpture of his 
age, he sometimes indulged in language of strong 
fulmination and reproof, and not without reason. 
There is no denying the pagan tendency which had 
crept into Italian art towards the close of the fifteenth 
century, a tendency to emphasise the sensuous side of 
life, to practise sensuous methods of representation, to 
introduce immodest sentiments and dress even into 
sacred pictures, " tricking out the Mother of God in the 
frippery of a ; courtesan." It was against this that 
Savonarola inveighed. He was no enemy to art itself. 
His quarrel was with what he deemed the debasement 
of art, and he endeavoured to purify it from its 
sensual taint, his contention being that art should be 
employed to represent elevated and spiritual loveliness 
and to raise the thoughts to better things. He was 
the counsellor and inspirer of many artists, and his 
influence over them was great. He founded a school 
of design in his own convent, and one brother, the 
painter Fra Bartolomaneo della Porta, was his close and 
devoted friend. Outside the convent not a few of the 
most distino^uished artists were to be reckoned more or 
less distinctly among his followers — Sandro Botti- 



i6o SAVONAROLA 

celli, Lorenzo di Credi, Luca della Robbia, and 
Perugino ; the architect Cronaca, the sculptors Baccio 
da Montelupo, Ferrucci, Baccio Baldini, Giovanni 
Carniola, Michael Angelo. The last of these, and the 
greatest, was one of his constant hearers, and after- 
wards, in old age, that supremely gifted master in the 
domain of art sought edification in reading and re- 
reading the sermons of the preacher who had taken a 
strong hold on his reverential regard. Such men were 
first attracted by the dash and versatility of Savonarola's 
genius ; then they were charmed by the frequent 
splendour, glow, and originality of his thoughts. They 
saw that he had a real sense of beauty and a feeling 
for nature, as they themselves had, and that he under- 
stood the best ideas of classic antiquity ; while at the 
same time they were conscious of being led by him to 
larger and loftier conceptions. He unveiled for them 
new forms of grandeur and loveliness, gave fresh 
stimulus to their imagination by flashing on their 
vision the radiance of the Christian ideal, and thereby 
opened for them a wider range of artistic aspiration 
and endeavour. Hence Dr. Pastor, quoting a number 
of learned authorities for the statement, declares that 
his " influence can be traced in many of the works 
of art produced by his contemporaries," and that 
certain incidents which Savonarola was wont to 
describe with graphic eloquence in his sermons 
were frequently chosen as subjects by Florentine 
artists. 

It must be evident, therefore, that one whose attitude 
towards poetry and painting was so sympathetic and 
inspiring, could not have been wilfully guilty of 
destroying any books or pictures of sterling merit in 



THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES i6i 

the memorable bonfire of 1497. The charges urged 
against him of displaying on that occasion a fanatical 
opposition to literature and art must be based on an 
exaggerated estimate of the value of the objects which 
were then consigned to the flames. 



II 



CHAPTEE XYIIl 

The Sentence of Excommunication 

Notwithstanding the popular favour he still retained, 
and the success of his effort to cleanse the Carnival 
celebrations of their old licence, Savonarola was fully 
aware of the increasing danger of the position in which 
he stood. Alexander vi. was still bent on his policy of 
coercing or enticing Florence to abandon the alliance 
with France, and he, as the outstanding obstacle to 
that policy, was constantly menaced. His central in- 
terest, however, was the revival of true religion in 
Florence and throughout the land ; and his soul was 
pained by the deepening horror of the immoralities and 
vices going on at Rome, which were spreading a 
defiling influence far and near. The scandalous doings 
of the Borgia family, in which the Pope had his own 
guilty share, were absolutely crippling the spiritual 
power of the Church and covering religion with con- 
tempt. Savonarola could not hold his peace. What- 
ever the consequences, he felt impelled to utter his 
protest in the name of God ; and, standing in the 
Cathedral pulpit in Lent, while avoiding any personal 
attack upon the Pope, he declaimed against the lusts, 
sensualities, and crimes which were more and more dis- 
gracing the Papal Court, and enlarged on the need for 

162 



SENTENCE OF EXCOMMUNICATION 163 

the Church's purification. He avowed his determina- 
tion to rouse the Christian world against the evil of 
which Rome was the seat. " I am here," he said, " be- 
cause the Lord appointed me to this place, and I await 
His call, but then will I send forth a mighty cry that 
shall resound throughout Christendom, and make the 
corpse of the Church to tremble even as trembled the 
body of Lazarus at the voice of our Lord." Ex- 
communication might be decreed, but he did not fear 
it ; he would have his own answer to give which would 
amaze the world. In striving to restore religion to its 
purity and power, he was prepared for a worse fate 
than excommunication. " O Lord, I seek only Thy 
cross, ... let me give my blood for Thee, even as 
Thou gavest Thine for me." 

In fact, excommunication appeared now only an in- 
cident in the stern conflict which he felt under an 
imperative obligation to carry on to its utmost issues. 
The cause of religion and righteousness was jeopardised 
by the notorious iniquities in which the Pope and his 
family were steeped, and the whole moral passion of 
Savonarola's soul was stirred. Though a martyr's 
death should be the penalty, he could make no com- 
promise at a juncture so momentous. He would 
kindle the indignation of Europe, and put forth a 
supreme eflfort to stem the tide of pollution which was 
flowing from the metropolis of Christendom. That it 
was a desperate struggle he knew ; he had a clear com- 
prehension of the malignant forces which would be 
aroused against himself ; but an inward constraint was 
upon him to go forward, and, once committed, there 
could be no turning back. 

The Pope was highly enraged at those Lent f ulmina- 



1 64 SAVONAROLA 

tions, which were duly retailed to him in factiously 
exaggerated reports. Alexander vi. was already 
strongly incensed against Savonarola on account of 
his cool and resolute resistance to the order requiring 
the union of San Marco's and the convents associated 
with it to the newly-created Tusco- Roman Congrega- 
tion, of which Cardinal CarafFa, an old friend and well- 
wisher, had been appointed as head. For the moment, 
however, Alexander, always resourceful in statecraft, 
disguised his irritation, and adopted an adroit means 
of circumventing the Florentine Friar. He secretly 
appealed to the self-interest of the Florentines by 
offering to obtain for them the restoration of Pisa, 
provided they would show themselves " good Italians," 
break their alliance with France, and join the Holy 
League. Attractive as the proposal seemed, the 
Florentines had their doubts as to its sincerity. Their 
special envoy to Rome, Ser Alessandro Bracci, was 
instructed to tell the Pope that while the Floren- 
tines were not only " good " but " excellent Italians," 
and had no wish to injure any Italian power, they 
could not abandon their alliance with France. To this 
he received the sarcastic reply, " Sir Secretary, you are 
as fat as Ourself , but you have come on a lean mission ; 
and if you have nothing else to say, you may be gone." 
Then, after asserting his belief that the obstinacy of 
the Florentines was due to faith in the prophecies of 
their "chattering friar," Alexander broadly hinted a 
threat of forcing Florence into submission and creating 
a revolution in its affairs. 

The threat was soon put into execution. Alexander 
gave encouragement to Piero de Medici, who had been 
hanging on at Rome and leading a loose, spendthrift 



SENTENCE OF EXCOMMUNICATION 165 

life, to make another attempt on Florence and recover 
his place there. The state of parties in the city at the 
time appeared to favour the enterprise. The younger 
members of the aristocratic families had at once taken 
advantage of Valori's new law, reducing the age for 
admission to the Great Council, and had thrown their 
weight into the political scale. There had happened 
also a certain fluctuation of feeling, such as is witnessed 
not infrequently in connection with the public life of a 
community — a distinct swerving of opinion, an ebb of 
popular interest, by which the balance of parties is un- 
expectedly reversed. And so it came about that when 
Valori's two months' term of office expired and a new 
Signory was elected for March and April, the repre- 
sentatives of the Arrabbiati and Medici together were 
in the majority, and chose an influential and trusted 
adherent of the Medici cause, Bernardo del Nero, for 
the post of Gonfaloniere. This was a blow to Savon- 
arola, and a triumph for his foes ; to Piero de Medici 
it furnished an opportunity for his personal designs, 
which he promptly proceeded to turn to account, with 
the Pope's blessing and support to aid him. Cheered 
on by a message from his partisans in Florence, Piero 
mustered a force of thirteen hundred men, and by rapid 
marches v/as soon close to the city gates. The alarm, 
however, had been given, and the friends of liberal 
government were on their guard and prepared. The 
gates were fortified with cannon, and kept sternly 
closed, and even Bernardo del Nero, who had mean- 
while sent an urgent warning to Piero to delay his 
attack for the time, was constrained by the current of 
popular sentiment to put on an appearance of enthusi- 
asm for the city's defence. For a whole day Piero 



1 66 SAVONAROLA 

waited with his troops outside the walls, but no sign of 
welcome or of co-operation came from his faction 
within ; and, having no spirit to run desperate risks, 
he retired in discomfiture, the victim of delusive pro- 
mises and false hopes, but leaving behind him in 
Florence itself a ferment of suspicions and fears and 
embittered party feeling destined to cause grave 
social and political trouble ere long. 

The Medicean cause was thus for the moment dis- 
credited. The Pope disowned all connection with 
Piero. The ever-active Arrabbiati, seizing their advan- 
tage, so worked on the popular unrest as to gain the 
ascendancy at the next election, and at the beginning 
of May 1497 a Signory avowedly hostile to Savonarola 
was placed in power. The effect was soon visible in 
riotous outbreaks and in the renewal of those licen- 
tious scenes which had now for a considerable period 
been suppressed. It was patent in many ways that a 
reaction against Savonarola's moral domination had 
begun. His followers were still a large and powerful 
body, and by their simple dress and devout demeanour 
the Piagnoni could everywhere be recognised. All 
lovers of order and good government were also on his 
side, and honoured him for his political capacit}^, his 
public spirit, and his unblemished purity of life. But 
the sovereignty he had wielded over the manners, 
habits, and thoughts of the people was gradually slip- 
ping from his grasp. In the minds of many, a keen 
disappointment had been caused by the failure of his 
predictions regarding the great things to be accom- 
plished by Charles viii., and accordingly their faith in 
the preacher, whom they had once so ardently revered 
as a prophet of the Lord, was losing its hold, 



SENTENCE OF EXCOMMUNICATION 167 

Owing partly to the impaired condition of his health, 
and partly to the delicacy of his position at this parti- 
cular stage of his controversy with Rome, Savonarola 
appeared less frequently than usual in the pulpit. The 
arguments which he was obliged to employ in defending 
himself ag^ainst his traducers, and in vindicating his 
attitude towards the Pope and his disobedience to the 
mandate regarding the Tusco-Roman Congregation, 
robbed his preaching of its wonted directness and 
freedom. He was hampered by the tone of self -justi- 
fication which the situation was more and more forcing 
upon him, and which largely coloured his sermons 
during this period. Moreover, the Pope's further 
action was still a matter of suspense ; and while 
the position was complicated and liable to miscon- 
struction in the eyes of the world, he felt that it 
was only under some special call or distinct neces- 
sity that he could serve any good end by speaking 
in public. The time for open defiance had not yet 
come. 

In consequence, perhaps, of this greater seclusion 
and rarer appearance in the pulpit, the decline of 
Savonarola's power more readily set in. Nevertheless, 
from the first the causes of that decline must have been 
present, although for a while their operation was 
arrested by the subduing force of so lofty and master- 
ful a personality. Against the enforcement by formal 
enactments and prohibitions of a high-pitched and 
austere morality upon a people neither by native tem- 
perament nor by training prepared for it, the reaction 
was sure, sooner or later, to come. Its coming was 
now evident in the accession to political influence of 
the great Friar's opponents, and in the relaxed decorum 



i6S SAVONAROLA 

of life and conduct gonorally by \Yliioh that circum- 
stance was followed. 

Savonai*ola was made the object of an insultino- and 
villainously - purposed demonstration. It had been 
announced that he was to preacli on Ascension Day, 
the -Ith of May, before an oixler of the Signory pro- 
hibiting sermons in any of the churches should come 
into force — an order professedly pix^mpted by anxiety 
to prevent the spread of the plague which was thi*eat- 
ening the city. It was his last chance, for a time at 
least, of addressing the people, and he resolved to embrace 
it. During the previous night the Oompagnacci. who, 
imder their insolent leader, Dolfo Spini. were gaining 
courage to pursue their lawless courses, managed to 
steal into the Cathedral, where they befouled the 
pulpit with tilth, spread the raw skin of an ass over 
it, and ran nails with their points upwards into the 
board on which he was wont to strike his hands in the 
excitement of speaking. But the outrage was dis- 
covered in good time, and all traces of it cleared away ; 
and the preacher's enemies had the mortitication of 
seeing him ascend and begin his discourse with per- 
fect calmness. It was a discourse on the power of 
faith, intended to encourage the pious in meeting the 
trvins: times for relio-ion and social well-beinp* which 
evidently were at hand. Suddenly there was a crash : 
an alms-box had been broken oH' from its place on the 
wall and liung on the floor. It was the doing of the 
graceless young aristocrats, who were not to be ba tiled 
in their evil-minded designs. A panic seized the con- 
gregation ; there was a wild rush for the doors, and a 
scene of frantic confusion ensued. Friends and foes 
alike made a dash for the pulpit, the one to defend the 



SENTICNCK OF EXCOMMUNICATION 169 

preacher, the other to aHsail him. Savonarola remained 
bent over the de^k in silent prayer, and not till the 
tumult had so far Bubsided did he descend and accept 
the protection of his loyal adherents, who now, armed 
with swords and spears, escorted him with shouts of 
Viva Crista and brandishing of weapons to his convent 
gate. 

This scandalous scene was noised abroad and became 
the talk of the day all over Italy. The result in 
Florence was an edict of the Signory, positively for- 
bidding friars of any kind to preach without their 
permission, while the wooden galleries provided for 
Savonarola's immense audiences were all rjEjmoved. 
There was even a suggestion mooted that the pre- 
servation of the public peace required that Savonarola 
himself should be exiled, although — and this is signi- 
ficant of the change of feeling which had occuiTcd — 
the real authors of the Cathedral disturbance were 
allowed to go unpunished. At Rome the news of the 
tumult on Ascension Day hastened the Pope's action 
in taking his long contemplated step and signing the 
Brief of Excommunication. That former discomfited 
rival, Fra Mariano, it seems, had been enviously ?jusy 
in instigating Alexander to move in this direction, 
and to crush the man whom he vilified as " the per- 
dition of the Florentine people." Other adversaries 
also used their influence for the same end, and on 
13th May the formidable document was issued. It 
was a remarkable production. Describing Savonarola 
as " a certain Fra Girolamo," who was reported to 
be Vicar of San Marco in Florence, and who had 
sown abroad pernicious doctrine to the scandal and 
ruin of simple souls, it proceeded to state that he 



170 SAVONAROLA 

had been commanded in a Brief to desist from 
preaching, and come to Eome to obtain pardon for 
his errors. He had, however, declined to obey; yet 
in the hope that he would be converted by clemency, 
his excuses had been accepted and his disobedience 
treated with gracious forbearance. That hope had 
been disappointed, and accordingly another Brief 
had been issued, ordaining that he should unite his 
convent with the new Tusco-Eoman Congregation. 
Still he had persisted in his obstinacy, setting the 
ordinance at nought and disregarding the ecclesiastical 
censures which he had thereby incurred. " Wherefore 
we command you, on all festivals, and in presence 
of the people, to declare the said Fra Girolamo ex- 
communicate, and to be held as such by all men, 
for his failure to obey our admonitions and commands. 
Moreover, all persons whatsoever are to be warned 
that they are to avoid him as excommunicated and 
suspected of heresy, under pain of the same penalty." 
Ere receiving this Brief, but clearly apprehensive 
that the blow was impending, Savonarola wrote a 
letter to the Pope, complaining that heed had been 
given only to the false accusations of his enemies, 
while the evidence in disproof of those accusations had 
been ignored. He had never, he protested, made any 
personal attack upon the Pope as in former days he 
had had to rebuke Fra Mariano for doing. He was 
always ready to submit himself to the judgment of 
the Church, and preached no other doctrine than 
that of the Holy Fathers, as would soon be proved 
to the whole world in his forthcoming work, The 
Triuonph of the Cross. If all human help should 
fail him, he will trust in God, 



SENTENCE OF EXCOMMUNICATION 171 

It appears from subsequent correspondence between 
the Florentine envoys in Rome and the Council of Ten, 
that this letter had a softening effect on Alexander VI., 
and moved him to regret that he had signed the 
Brief. But it came too late. The judgment had been 
pronounced and the document conveying it despatched 
before the letter itself was penned. 

From various causes the Brief of Excommunication 
was not delivered in Florence till the 18th of June. 
It was addressed to the convents of Santa Maria 
Novella, Santa Croce, Santo Spirito, the Badia, and 
the Annunziata; and in the churches attached to 
these houses it was solemnly read out at night to 
the assembled monks, amid the glimmer of candles 
and the occasional tinkle of bells. When the last 
word was reached, the lights were suddenly extin- 
guished, leaving the listeners to retire in silence and 
gloom. 

Immediately copies of the document were posted 
up at the church doors, and all Florence was moved 
by the publication of the awful sentence against a man 
who had filled so large a place in the thoughts and 
life of the citizens. The Piagnoni and all lovers of 
order were thrown into grief; the Arrabbiati were 
exultant — the great obstacle to their hopes of con- 
verting the Republic into an aristocratic oligarchy 
was now struck down. In monastic and clerical 
circles the denouncer of ecclesiastical delinquencies 
and all his brethren at San Marco were haughtily 
ostracised. Very soon, moreover, the bonds of moral 
restraint were thrown off. The wild and profligate 
elements in the population broke loose, and the 
Compagnacci led the way in headstrong profanity. 



172 SAVONAROLA 

Riotoiisness and revelry again disturbed the streets 
at night ; vice and wantonness appeared in open day ; 
the taverns were once more filled ; there was a wide- 
spread return to extravagance and frivolity. Now 
that the potent voice which had so long kept the 
immoral tendencies of men under control was con- 
demned to silence, there was a rebound to the old 
recklessness and licence. 

In the meantime Savonarola in his own way, and 
his influential sympathisers in theirs, were endeavour- 
ing to meet the stroke dealt by the Papal Brief. He 
w^rote in great haste an Epistle against the Sur- 
Teptitious Excommunication, addressed not to the 
Pope, but to " all Christians, beloved of God." In 
that letter he reasserted his mission as God's mes- 
senger to announce the tribulations which were to 
fall on Italy, and especially on Rome, for the removal 
of evils and the renovation of the Church; and then 
he proceeded to argue that the excommunication was 
invalid because it was based on misrepresentations, 
and put forth with an evil intention in opposition 
to God and the truth. He had never, he affirmed, 
been disobedient to the Holy Roman Church, nor to 
the Pope, nor to any Superior of his, down to that 
present hour. " For we ought to obey our Superior 
in so far as he holds the place of God ; but he does 
not hold the place of God, and is not our Superior, 
when he commands what is contrary to God. Accord- 
ingly, it has happened that in such a case as this I 
have not obeyed, knowing that neither God nor the 
Church wishes me to obey in things that are contrary 
to their commands." In closing he said that if his 
arguments were not listened to and further steps 



SENTENCE OF EXCOMMUNICATION 173 

were taken against him, he would make the truth 
known to all the world in such a fashion that no 
one should be able to gainsay it. He followed this 
up by a second letter, Against the Sentence of Ex- 
communication, dealing with the subject specially in 
the light of the views of the leading authorities on 
ecclesiastical law, and particularly quoting Gerson's 
teaching that to yield unqualified submission to an 
unjust sentence would be to show the patience of an 
ass and the foolish timidity of a hare ; that it is 
perfectly lawful to appeal from the Pope to a General 
Council ; and that in many cases a Pope may be 
disobeyed when he scandalously abuses his power to 
an evil end. 

The cogency of this reasoning has been subjected 
to a searching criticism by Roman Catholic writers, 
and the criticisms all lead to the same conclusion. 
When full credit has been given to the sincerity of 
Savonarola's motives, and when the value of his work 
for the reform of morals has been recognised, he is 
still pronounced by those writers as flagrantly at 
fault for his insubordination in refusing acquiescence 
to the commands of his ecclesiastical superior. His 
attitude in adhering to his own honest conviction 
of right and ignoring the decrees of the Pope on 
the ground of their alleged injustice, is condemned 
as unwarrantable presumption. It is the old and 
endless controversy between the absolute authority 
claimed by the Roman Catholic Church on the one 
hand, and the natural rights asserted on behalf of 
the human soul and conscience on the other — a hope- 
less and irreconcilable antagonism. So long as a 
religious corporation, skilfully organised and welded 



174 SAVONAROLA 

together, insists on the ordinances of its official head 
being received, outwardly at least, with unqualified 
submission, and so long as the spirit of man, facing 
the vital questions of right and wrong, dares to speak 
according to its own judgment and act on its own 
warrant, the conflict will continue ; and no logic of 
argument, nothing but the logic of events and the 
slow progress of the world's enlightenment, will avail 
for its settlement. The demands of absolutism are 
held as completely above reason ; they are bound up 
with so many vested interests, and are so essential 
to the maintenance of the old traditional power and 
dazzling, prestige and glory, that there is no prospect 
of their ever being abated until the soul's deep instincts 
for freedom awake to strength and gather courage 
to defy them. 



CHAPTEK XIX 

Six Months of Silence 

The plague had broken out and was working its 
ravages in Florence when Savonarola found himself 
placed under ban by the excommunicatory Brief. 
People were hurrying out of the city and seeking 
safety in the purer atmosphere of the country hamlets 
and villages. The crowded condition of San Marco's 
was a source of a.nxiety. Considering the large 
number who had joined the brotherhood through the 
attraction of its Prior's fame and gifts, there was 
reason to fear a heavy amount of suffering and 
mortality should the terrible malady seize on a 
community so closely pent up together. Savonarola 
met the emergency with that practical wisdom and 
bold decision which he so often displayed. He sent 
away the novices and younger friars to places where 
the contagion was less likely to reach them, and then 
devoted himself to the edification of the brethren left 
behind and to the service of the sick. Friends pleaded 
with him to flee, and some of his wealthier adherents 
oftered him in their own villas a secure retreat from 
the danger. But whatever faults might be detected 
in him, he never failed to prove that he had a heart 
too big, sound, and true to yield to personal fear. He 

175 



176 SAVONAROLA 

remained with steadfast resolve at his post of duty. 
His usefuhiess, however, at that time of distress was 
circumscribed by the ecclesiastical interdict resting 
upon him. Still the gates of his convent were open 
to all who might resort to him for comfort, and in 
those weeks of trouble and dread, when fifty or sixty 
were dying in a day in the pestilence-stricken city, 
and the burden of a great awe and sorrow lay on 
people's minds, there were many who found in his 
ready sympathy and gracious counsels a rich sustain- 
ing strength. And while in this way he cheered the 
sad and anxious around him in Florence itself, he did 
not forget those friends at a distance who were in- 
volved in the severe strain and concern caused by the 
general calamity. To not a few of them he wrote 
letters of encouragement, calming their fears, and 
exhorting them to trust in God. He wrote also to his 
own family at Ferrara, assuring them of the safety of 
his brother Fra Maurelio, who had for some time been 
associated with him as a member of the San Marco 
brotherhood, and expressing a tenderness of affection 
still unchilled by all the absorbing interests of his life 
and all his experience of fame and power. 

One letter belonging to this period possesses a pecu- 
liar importance. It was not occasioned, however, by 
the troubles connected with the plague, but by a 
tragical event which threw into blacker relief than 
ever the horrors and crimes which were bringing on 
Rome the scorn of the world. On the 14th of June, 
the Pope's eldest son, Piero Borgia, Duke of Gandia, 
was foully done to death and his body flung into the 
Tiber, from which it was dragged out two days later. 
Suspicion fell on several distinguished members of the 



SIX MONTHS OF SILENCE 177 

Papal Court, and among others on the notorious Caesar 
Borgia, the murdered man's own brother; but the 
police completely failed in discovering the actual 
perpetrator of the deed, although the investigations 
revealed an appalling amount of base jealousy and 
treachery in the highest quarters. The consternation 
and distress in the Papal palace were unexampled. 
The Pope was overwhelmed with grief, a grief that 
threatened to rend his heart in sunder. As the 
Venetian Ambassador in one of his despatches declared, 
" The wild wail of the bereaved old man in the Castle 
ol St. Angelo was heard in the streets around." He 
shut himself up in his room, and for four days neither 
ate nor drank, nor had a moment's sleep. This out- 
burst of grief was followed by a spasm of remorse. 
Alexander took the blow as a visitation from God and 
a warning to him to return from the error of his ways. 
He made good resolutions, and, summoning a Con- 
sistory, he professed his determination to enter on a 
real effort of improvement both in his own life and 
in the Church. He was to renounce all favouritism 
in the disposal of ecclesiastical benefices; he was to 
begin the reform in himself, in his family, and his 
court, and so proceed through all the ranks of the 
Church till the whole work should be accomplished. 
And as a practical proof of the sincerity of his in- 
tentions, he appointed six cardinals on the spot to 
constitute the Commission that should carry the reform 
into effect. 

When this startling news reached Florence, Savonarola 
took up his pen and addressed a letter of condolence 
to the afflicted and penitent Pontiff under whose 
terrible anathema he now lay. He probably judged 

13 



178 SAVONAROLA 

that a time when the old man's mind would be open 
to sacred impressions, and in conciliatory but earnest 
terms he urged on him the power and value of faith 
as a source of strength in adversity. " Blessed is he 
who is called to this gift of faith, without which no 
one can have peace. Let your Holiness respond to this 
blessed call, so that soon your mourning may be turned 
into joy." He, the writer, was himself in suffering 
for the sake of a work which he had at heart, and 
he pleaded with the bereaved father to help forward 
that work and not give ear to the wicked; then 
would the Lord bestow on him the oil of gladness 
for the spirit of grief. He had written, he protested, 
under the prompting of charity and in all humility, 
desiring that his Holiness might find comfort in God. 
'' May He console you in your tribulation." 

This letter was taken in good part, and tended to 
further the exertions which the authorities of Florence 
were making through their envoys at Rome to induce 
the Pope to withdraw the sentence of excommunica- 
tion. Alexander, indeed, was so far moved by the 
influences brought to bear upon him, that he delegated 
the consideration of Savonarola's case to the Commis- 
sion of Reform which he had just recently appointed. 
Petitions and counter-petitions went up to Rome from 
Florence. The Arrabbiati, on their side, renewed their 
old accusations, and pressed for a confirmation of the 
Papal decree. On the other hand, the brethren of San 
Marco pleaded earnestly for its removal, and enlarged 
on the purity of their Prior's doctrines and the lofty 
saintliness of his life; while one influential petition, 
signed by three hundred and sixty-three leading citi- 
zens, whom the plague had not yet driven away, was 



SIX MONTHS OF SILENCE 179 

equally strong in its testimony in Savonarola's favour. 
The new Signory also, which this time was friendly, 
sent a letter to the Pope, laying stress on the eminent 
virtues of the condemned Friar, the wonderful fruits 
of his moral reformation, and the holy manner in 
which he lived. 

Weeks passed; the plague gradually abated; fugi- 
tive citizens returned to their homes, and Florence 
resumed its usual routine; but there was no sign 
of the recall of the excommunication. Suddenly in 
August a whirlwind of agitation was raised, by the 
disclosure of hitherto unknown facts respecting the 
attempted surprise of the city by Piero de Medici a 
few months before. Through the arrest of an out- 
lawed Medicean partisan, Lamberto dell' Antella, evi- 
dence came to light which fastened the blame of that 
plot on five citizens of great social distinction, whose 
complicity had not previously been suspected. There 
were Niccolo Ridolfi and Lorenzo Tornabuoni, both 
related to the Medici family. Then there were Gio- 
vanni Cambi and Gionozzo Pucci, the one a rich mer- 
chant, and the other a youth of noble birth and great 
talent. But the most striking figure of all was the 
venerable Bernardo del Nero, a man of high character 
and reputation, and now seventy-five years of age, 
who had been Gonfaloniere at the time when the move 
was made to put the traitorous scheme into execution. 
It was pleaded on his behalf that his only ofience was 
that he had known of the conspiracy and had not dis- 
closed it. On the other hand, it was argued that such 
conduct in the chief of the State was criminal in its 
turpitude. 

In view of the powerful connections of the accused, 



i8o SAVONAROLA 

the case was found most embarrassing to deal with, 
and the various bodies of officials shifted the respon- 
sibility of condemnation from one to another. The 
Council of the Eight threw on the Signory the task 
of deciding; the Signory referred judgment to a 
mixed assembly, first of twenty, then of one hundred 
and thirty-six representative citizens ; and in the last 
resort the Eight were compelled to pronounce the ver- 
dict. When the mixed tribunal of twenty passed a 
sentence of guilty, an appeal to the Greater Council 
was offered, but declined. After the final condemna- 
tion came, however, the right of appeal was resolutely 
claimed, and over this claim there was fierce and pro- 
tracted debate in the Signory, giving rise to dissensions 
and tumults highly dangerous to the welfare and safety 
of the city; for outside, popular indignation against 
the traitors was strong. Four of the Signory were in 
favour of the appeal being granted, five against it; 
and it seemed as if a clear and emphatic decision was 
hopeless, till Francesco Valori, with his impetuous 
energy, stepped forward in burning wrath to the table, 
and, seizing the ballot-box, cried out, " Let justice at 
once be done," and so overpowered the dissentient 
members by his denunciation of the accused, that they 
gave their votes for the sentence of death. The con- 
demned men were granted but little time to prepare 
for their tragic end. An attempt by their friends to 
evoke compassion for them, by bringing them out 
barefooted and in their chains to the Council hall, 
entirely failed in its purpose, and at two o'clock in 
the morning, in the courtyard of the Bargello, they 
were led to the block and bowed their heads to the 
axe of the executioner. 



SIX MONTHS OF SILENCE i8i 

To all these incidents and the commotion created by 
them it cannot be supposed that Savonarola was 
indifferent. His feelings with regard to the men 
charged with treason must have been distinctly adverse 
as the evidence of their guilt became revealed. The 
free, self-governing Republic was dear to his heart ; of 
the veiled despotism of the Medici regime he had an 
invincible abhorrence, and he dreaded the possibility of 
its restoration. With such sentiments so deeply rooted, 
it was not to be expected that he w^ould look with 
aught but reprobation on those conspirators by whose 
conduct the Republic had been placed in jeopardy. He 
has been censured for not interposing in favour of 
mercy, and especially for not exerting his influence to 
procure for the unhappy men the privilege of appeal to 
the Greater Council. It must be remembered, however, 
that the appeal to the Greater Council was a measure 
passed contrary to his personal advice and wishes. 
George Eliot has failed to give due weight to this 
consideration, and in her Ro'mola she has presented 
Savonarola's conduct in the matter in a dubious light, 
as if he had been seriously at fault in not exerting his 
power to secure for the condemned men the very right 
of appeal which had been established through his 
instrumentality. It is necessary to recall the fact that 
he had never advocated a right of appeal to'the Greater 
Council. The appeal which he did advocate, but which, 
greatly to his disappointment, was not carried, was an 
appeal to a more limited and, as he believed, more 
intelligent and deliberative tribunal; and it would 
therefore have been against his better judgment to 
submit a case involving the question of life or death to 
the larger assembly, where the heat of party prejudice 



1 82 SAVONAROLA 

and feeling might be apt to sway the decision. Besides, 
the case had actually been tried before the very kind 
of court which accorded best with his ideas, when it 
was submitted to the mixed tribunal of one hundred 
and thirty- six representative citizens; and conse- 
quently, in his view, all that justice required had been 
done. As to the assertion that he ought to have put in 
a plea for mercy, it is sufficient answer to point out the 
circumstance that the pulpit was closed to him now, 
and that he was debarred from any suitable opportunity 
of moving the public mind, while the influential men 
among his followers, like Valori and others, who were 
taking a prominent part in public work, were too 
absorbingly intent on combating the designs of oppos- 
ing factions, and safeguarding what they deemed the 
interests of free government, to give much heed to any 
such plea. Savonarola was no longer the supreme 
director of the city's political business. He was still 
the popular idol, the outstanding figure that gave to 
Florence its proud and far-extending renown, although 
the Pope's ban and the Signory's hesitating attitude on 
account of it w^ere shaking the old enthusiastic con- 
fidence among certain sections of the community. But 
the place he had held in the politics of Florence was 
now filled by men more directly concerned with polit- 
ical life. At a hazardous emergency, when the city 
was menaced with anarchy, and there w^as no public 
man strong and wise enough to take the helm and 
guide the State, he, by his masterly gifts and cultured 
sagacity, had met the need of the hour, and almost 
dictated the constitution of the revived Republic. The 
need had passed ; the constitution framed under his 
advice was in full working order ; the political activity 



SIX MONTHS OF SILENCE 183 

of the commonwealth could go on without his personal 
leadership ; and — weightiest fact of all, perhaps — the 
very spirit of freedom which he had kindled and called 
to life was learning to act on its own impulse, and 
growing disposed to claim its own independence in the 
administration of affairs. Those, therefore, who blame 
him for not interfering in behalf of the condemned 
conspirators fail to make due allowance for all the facts 
of the situation at that particular crisis. 

One result of the blow given to the plotters against 
the Republic was the return to supremacy of Savon- 
arola's friends, the Piagnoni. The various Signories 
elected during the remainder of this year 1497 were 
all distinctly on his side. They put forth every effort 
to obtain the revocation of the Papal censure. It was 
felt to be a loss to the city, that the mighty voice which 
had stirred men to higher aims and touched the finer 
chords of their nature by its eloquent calls to faith 
and godliness, should be doomed so long to silence. It 
was felt also that the friction with Rome into which 
Florence was drawn by reason of the excommunication 
was detrimental to its peace and general prosperity. 
While the negotiations of the Signory were proceeding, 
an offer was made to Savonarola himself which showed 
that the Holy Father was disposed to yield. He was 
given to understand, through the Cardinal of Siena, 
that on payment of five thousand crowns to a certain 
creditor of the latter dignitary, the ban would be 
removed. This was an indirect assurance that full 
absolution might be purchased, but Savonarola rejected 
the proposal, believing, as he said, in writing to a friend, 
that he would be far more deeply banned were he to 
accept absolution at such a price. 



1 84 SAVONAROLA 

As the period of silence lengthened out, the evidences 
of Savonarola's literary activity began to appear. 
Several pamphlets and tractates issued from his pen — 
The Lamentation of the Bride of CJirist, The Seven 
Steps of the Spiritual Life of St. Bonaventura, On 
the Exercise of Charity, and the finely- written Epistle 
to Sisters of the Third Order of St. Dominic. It was 
then also that he published the elaborate theological 
treatise which for many months had engaged his time 
and thought, The Triumph of the Cross. It is in 
this work that we find the most convincing proofs of 
Savonarola's learning and intellectual power. It brings 
into view his clear and easy command of the scholastic, 
and also of the most advanced philosophic, knowledge 
of his age. Its style, which presents a marked con- 
trast to that of his sermons, is calm, carefully logical, 
dispassionate. The design of the book is to establish on 
strictly rational grounds the Divine origin and truth of 
Christianity as a religion whose doctrines, though above 
the power of reason to discover, are yet in perfect 
harmony with reason when revealed. It is here that 
we find its originality. The method adopted is a 
decided departure from the form of argument usually 
followed up to that da}^, and is more in keeping with 
the demands of the modern spirit. " In this book," it 
is said in the Introduction, '•' we wish to proceed only 
by reasonings ; we shall invoke no authority, but act 
as if it were only necessary to believe our own reason 
and experience ; for all men are compelled, under pain 
of folly, to consent to natural reason." On the lines 
thus laid down Savonarola proceeds to discourse in 
the first book on the existence and attributes of God ; 
in the second, on the truth, and excellence of the 



SIX MONTHS OF SILENCE 185 

Christian religion ; in the third, on the particular 
Christian doctrines and the principles of Christian 
morality and the sacraments ; in the fourth and last, 
on the superiority of Christianity to all other forms 
of faith; and here he most distinctly expresses the 
opinion, which ought to have been sufficient to clear 
away all suspicion of heresy, that the chair of St. 
Peter is the centre of the Roman Church, and that 
whoever departs from the unity and doctrines of the 
Roman Church unquestionably departs from Christ. 
The whole argument of the work is summed up in 
these eloquent words : " If we consider the power that 
Jesus Christ has employed to surmount so many gods, 
emperors, kings, tyrants, philosophers, and heretics; 
to subjugate without arms, without riches, without 
help of human wisdom, so many barbarous nations; 
if we represent to ourselves the faith, constancy, and 
firmness of so many saints martyred for the Christian 
faith ; the admirable wisdom used by Jesus Christ to 
illuminate in so short a time the whole world with 
the splendours of truth, and to purify it from the 
pollution of so many crimes and errors ; if we add to 
all this, the consideration of His immense kindness, 
by means of which He has attracted to His love an 
infinite number of men, who, not content with despising 
perishable things, have wished to suffer death rather 
than yield a single iota of their faith — we shall be 
compelled to confess the divinity of Christianity. What 
man, what god, other than Jesus Christ, has ever 
accomplished anything like it ? . . . The philosophers 
did not sufficiently comprehend the true end of life ; 
the astrologers lost themselves in the midst of a 
thousand superstitions ; the idolaters had no truth nor 



186 SAVONAROLA 

modesty ; the Jews are confounded by their own 
prophets, and by the captivity to which they are now 
reduced ; the heretics bear in their many divisions the 
proof of their errors ; Mahometanism falls before the 
attack of a simple philosophy ; Christianity alone 
remains, confirmed and ratified by the double power 
and double light of nature and grace — by the holy life 
of Christians — by wisdom, works, and miracles, which 
nourish the mind : therefore it is Divine. ... If, then, 
we have not lost all our understanding;, we must believe 
that the faith of Jesus Christ is the true faith ; that 
there is another life where we shall appear in person 
before the tribunal of that formidable Judge, who will 
place the wicked on His left hand, in torments, like 
impure goats, and the good on His right hand, in 
felicity, like sacred sheep, and will give them the 
privilege of seeing God face to face — God Triune and 
One, immense, ineffable — in whom the saints will 
eternally possess all blessedness, by the grace of the 
invincible and triumphant Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ, to whom be honour, power, empire, and glory, 
through ages of ages. Amen. " 



CHAPTER XX 

The Pope Defied 

In vain the Signoiy interceded and Savonarola waited ; 
Alexander vi. gave no indication of cancelling the ex- 
commnnicatory Brief, His spasm of compunction had 
subsided. He did not possess the moral strength to 
abandon his licentious habits. His penitential resolves, 
adopted in a moment of anguish and sorrow, had 
passed away and were forgotten, and he was once 
more following his old course of arrogant grasping, 
self-indulgence, and wily intrigue. He could no longer 
accuse Savonarola of schism or heresy. The TriuiniiJi 
of the Cross, with its powerful defence of the unity 
and the doctrines of the Church, removed all ground 
for such a charge. The Commission of Cardinals also, 
to whom his case had been referred, had pronounced 
the book unimpeachable in its orthodoxy. Yet the 
very presence of the strong-minded Friar in Florence 
was a danger to the policy on which Alexander was 
bent. He made overtures to the Signory to have 
Savonarola sent to Eome, but as they could not see 
their way to comply with the proposal, he stiffened 
himself into an attitude of relentless displeasure. 

The magistrates felt their strained relations with 
the Pope severely trying. There was a large amount 

187 



1 88 SAVONAROLA 

of uneasiness and apprehension, for the neighbouring 
Italian powers were waiting for their opportunity to 
take Florence at a disadvantage, and those responsible 
for the public safety were in anxious dread of the 
political complications which might at any moment 
arise. Moreover, the devout among the inhabitants, 
deprived of the inspiring ministrations of their 
favourite preacher, were depressed and dissatisfied. 
The moral condition of the city was going from bad 
to worse. Since the withdrawal of Savonarola's re- 
straining influence, the increase of vice and reckless- 
ness had become glaring, and as the later months of 
1497 wore on, the situation grew more intolerable. 

At last, on Christmas Day, Savonarola took a bold 
and decisive step. He three times publicly adminis- 
tered the Mass at San Marco, and led a solemn pro- 
cession through the cloisters. The magistrates soon 
displayed their sympathy with him in this act of 
defiance, by going on the feast of the Epiphany to 
present off'erings in San Marco Church, and by kissing 
the hand of Savonarola as he stood at the high altar. 
Ere many weeks elapsed, arrangements were made, 
with the full approval of the Signory, for his reap- 
pearance in the pulpit of the Duomo, and to provide 
for the crowds expected the wooden galleries were put 
up once more. The Archbishop's vicar attempted to 
prevent his preaching, by issuing a mandate forbidding 
all from attending, on the pain of sharing in the sen- 
tence of excommunication, and of being cut ofi" from 
the sacraments and Christian burial ; but the Signory 
made short work of this proclamation, and threatened 
to declare the vicar a rebel unless it was at once with- 
drawn. 



THE POPE DEFIED 189 

Accordingly, on Septuagesima Sunday, 11th Feb- 
ruary 1498, Savonarola stood up in the old place, 
which had been to him as a veritable throne, and from 
which, by the power of his genius, eloquence, and per- 
sonal character, he had so often swayed the lives and 
fortunes of the Florentine people. There, under the 
8egis of the secular, and in defiance of the ecclesiastical, 
power, he addressed an overflowing and anxiously 
expectant congregation, while the more virulent of his. 
opponents vented their spite in noisy demonstrations 
on the piazza outside the building. As was to be anti- 
cipated, his discourse dealt largely with the decree of 
excommunication and the line of action respecting it 
which he had been constrained to pursue. In burning 
words he defended his disobedience. "The righteous 
prince or the good priest," he said, " is merely an in- 
strument in the Lord's hands for the government of 
the people. But when the higher agency is with- 
drawn from the prince or priest, he is no longer an 
instrument, but a broken tool." Should the laws and 
commands issued be contrary to that which is the root 
and principle of all wisdom, namely, of godly living 
and charity, that was a proof that the higher agency 
was absent, and there was then in no wise an obliga- 
tion to obey. This, he contended, was palpabty the 
case with the sentence of excommunication, for no 
sooner was it published than the door was opened to 
every vice, there was a return to crime and profligacy, 
righteous living was struck down. " Therefore on him 
that giveth commands opposed to charity, which is the 
fulfilling of the law, anathema sit. Were such a com- 
mand pronounced by an angel, even by the Virgin 
Mary herself, and all the saints (which is certainly im- 



190 SAVONAROLA 

possible), anathema sit And if any Pope hath ever 
spoken to a contrary effect from this, let him be de- 
clared excommunicate. I say not that such Pope hath 
ever existed ; but if he hath existed he can have been 
no instrument of the Lord, but a broken tool. It is 
feared by some that, although this excommunication 
be powerless in heaven, it may have power in the 
Church. For me it is enough not to be interdicted by 
Christ. O my Lord, if I should seek to be absolved 
from this excommunication, let me be sent to hell ; I 
should shrink from seeking absolution as from mortal 
sin." 

Ere closing his sermon on that memorable day, he 
uttered some significant hints, which were greedily 
seized and kept in mind, as to the supernatural attest- 
ation which he believed his mission and claims would 
no doubt receive. " As yet," he said, " no miracle hath 
been forced from me ; but when the time cometh the 
Lord will stretch forth His hand." On the two Sun- 
days following he returned to the charge, and laboured 
to prove that a Pope may err in his judgments and 
sentences ; that as his own doctrine was the doctrine 
of godly living, therefore it proceeded from God, whilst 
the excommunication was hostile to godly living, and 
therefore proceeded from the devil. 

Thus the gauntlet was thrown down. Savonarola 
declared himself at war wdth the Pope. He had waited 
for months in the hope that Alexander would relent, 
and that the scandal of an open rupture with the Holy 
See might be avoided. Now that Alexander had shown 
himself implacable, he defied him. It was not, he 
pleaded, the defiance of mere insubordination. He did 
not rebel against ecclesiastical authority as such, but 



THE POPE DEFIED 191 

only against the unworthy exercise of ecclesiastical 
authority by a notoriously unspiritual man, a man 
who, by the admission of all parties, had bought his 
official position by bribery, and had ever since dis- 
graced it by the shameless immorality of his life. 
When such a man issued decrees based on false re- 
ports and calculated to promote ungodliness and the 
ruin of souls, as Alexander had done, he could not be 
the true representative of the Divine will. Nominal 
head of the Church though he was, it would in that 
case be mockery to suppose that he was speaking in 
the name of God. 

Such was the ground on which Savonarola took his 
stand, although in, his endeavour to vindicate it he was 
diverted again and again into distracting side issues 
and ingenious logical subtleties which impaired the 
force of his reasoning. His fundamental point clearly 
was — the right of the moral sense to challenge even 
lawfully constituted authority when the requirements 
of that authority contravene the plain dictates of jus- 
tice. That right cannot be argued against. The Roman 
Catholic Church does not argue against it. She simply 
denies it. She flatly says that no such right exists, 
that the moral sense has no title to judge for itself in 
matters of religious duty, but must bow implicitly and 
without question to the commands laid upon it by the 
Church's official Superior. And even although that 
Superior be a man of corrupt morals and his decrees 
unjust, such a consideration cannot be accepted as an 
excuse for withholding obedience. As Dr. Pastor 
tersely puts it from the Roman Catholic point of view, 
" According to the teaching of the Church, an evil life 
cannot deprive the Pope or any other ecclesiastical 



192 SAVONAROLA 

authority of his hiwful jurisdiction : " and again, 
" Savonarola was bound to obey the Holy Sec, how- 
ever it might be desecrated by such an occupant as 
Alexander vi." 

Savonarola represents the revolt of the deepest 
moral instincts against such absolute subjection. His 
mind rebelled against the idea so emphatically main- 
tained by ecclesiastics, that in the exercise of authority 
in the Church the moral quality of the official was a 
matter of inditierence. He felt the impulse strong 
within him to assert the freedom of his own con- 
science. Freedom of conscience, however, was still to 
him only a profound and irrepressible sentiment; he 
had not grasped it, and apparentl}^ never did quite 
grasp it, as a clearly detined principle to which he could 
give articulate expression. Had he done so, he would 
most probably have hastened the revolution in reli- 
gious thought and life which afterwards more slowly 
came to pass. Nevertheless, it was really the freedom 
of the conscience which was his underlying, impelling 
idea. He stood for the soul's indefeasible prerogative 
of testing by the light received from God the good -or 
bad character, the justice or injustice, of the rules of 
action which are imposed upon its will. He was mis- 
guided, let it be confessed, extravagant, fanatical even, 
in some of the methods and arguments he employed, 
yet he strove to maintain a resolute protest on behalf 
of the essential dignity of conscience, and of its war- 
rant to resist being crushed by the pressure of niere 
ecclesiastical officialism, when baselj'- or wrongfully 
inspired ; and by doing so he gave a decided stimulus 
to the progress of religion. For, indeed, it is by such 
resistance as he opposed to the unworthy exercise of 



THE POPE DEFIED 193 

authority in tJic Church t^iat the true authority is up- 
held. Implicit obedience to the unjust demands of 
authority may bo insisted on for the sake of discipline 
and to save scandal, but were obedience to unjust 
demands to be generally rendered on such grounds, 
injustice would grow more rampant and tyrannical 
still through its very success, as the history of the 
world repeatedly shows. In fact, it is one of the most 
unmistakable lessons of history, that those are the best 
friends of the Church who, by reason of their very 
loyalty to its spiritual interests, set themselves cour- 
ageously against all patent wrong-doing or corruption 
in the men who guide the Church's policy or wield 
contrfjl over its affairs. 

The crowd of citizens listened with liveliest interest 
to those sermons of F'ebruary 1498, in which their 
excommunicated Fra Girolamo sought to demonstrate 
the invalidity of the Papal decree ; yet the anxiety and 
hesitation felt by many among them as to the position 
he thus assumed could not be concealed. They admired 
and trusted the man for his pure and blameless life ; 
they honoured him highly for his gifts as a preacher, 
and for the good work he had done on behalf of 
religion and the public weal. Still, his defiance of the 
Holy See struck them with a feeling of pained un- 
easiness. That sense of the ghostly prestige of Papal 
authority in which they had been reared, and under 
which they had always lived, haunted and over- 
shadowed their minds. It was impossible to escape 
from its spell. They were awed by the very thought 
of a man being banned by that august and mysterious 
power which ruled Christendom from Rome, and when 
they saw their own familiar Friar treating the solemn 
13 



194 SAVONAROLA 

ban when pronounced against himself with cool and 
lofty disdain, they were smitten with something akin to 
dismay, as if startled by an act of sacrilegious audacity. 
There can be little doubt that the impression thus 
produced tended to the withdrawal from Savonarola 
of much of the confidence and sympathy which hitherto 
he had so freely received. Men especially of a cautious 
temper dropped aside from the ranks of his supporters. 

Evidently he was himself conscious of this impression, 
and the perception of it beguiled him into one of those 
lapses into fanaticism which marred the lofty simplicity 
of his life. In closing his third sermon in the Duomo, 
he announced his intention of making a daring 
challenge to prove the truth and sincerity of the 
course he had taken. On the last day of the Carnival 
he would say Mass in his convent church, and after- 
wards come out to the piazza with the Sacrament to 
give a solemn benediction. Then, he told his audience, 
they were to offer a special appeal to the Most High. 
" When I shall take the Sacrament in my hands, let 
every one earnestly pray that if this work proceeds not 
from the Lord, He may send upon me fire from heaven 
which shall then and there draw me down to hell." 

It was only natural that such a challenge, answering 
as it did to the expectation of a miraculous proof of 
his mission which his broad hint a fortnight before 
had awakened, should attract an enormous concourse 
of the citizens. On the crowning day of the Carnival 
the wide Piazza of San Marco was densely thronged. 
All eyes were riveted, with wondering concern or 
impatient curiosity, on the temporary wooden pulpit 
raised outside the door of the convent church. Close 
round the pulpit were ranged the black-mantled 



THE POPE DEFIED 195 

monks, chaunting their holy psahns, till Savonarola 
himself appeared, and knelt over the desk in silent 
prayer. Then, standing up, he addressed the solemnised 
and motionless throng, and called upon them to join in 
the prayer which he had asked them to offer to the 
Almighty. After a brief pause, he raised the conse- 
crated Host, blessed the multitude as they bent low at 
the sign, and then uttered the astounding appeal, " O 
Lord, if my deeds be not sincere, if my words come not 
from Thee, strike me in this moment with Thy thunder." 
The mass of spectators waited and gazed with absorbed 
expectancy, but no bolt fell from the sky, no thunder 
boomed. But what was manifest to all was the look 
of rapt ecstasy and radiant confidence in the dark- 
robed Friar's face. To his devoted disciples that was 
as a gleam of light from heaven, betokening the 
Divine approval of their master and his work ; and 
while their murmurs of pleased satisfaction rose and 
broke the stillness which had hitherto prevailed, he 
stepped down from the pulpit and retired into the 
church. That strange scene in front of San Marco was 
followed in the afternoon of the same day by a second 
Burning of the Vanities in the Piazza della Signoria. 
It was a repetition of the bonfire of the previous year, 
only with a taller pyramid, a larger and more valuable 
collection of doomed articles, and a more imposing 
procession, subjected, however, to insulting annoyance 
by the enraged and envious Compagnacci. When all 
were gathered round, the pile was duly fired, amid an 
outburst of chaunts and lauds, the blare of trumpets, 
and the clanging of bells ; and as the flames mounted 
and roared in their work of destruction, the Te Denm 
was sung. Then there was another procession, first to 



196 SAVONAROLA 

the front of the Duomo, to hand over the money 
collected to the Good Men of San Martino, and from 
there on to the Piazza of San Marco, where monks, 
clerics, and laymen joined hands in three separate 
rings, and to the music of hymns danced round a 
crucifix. So ended Savonarola's last Carnival, the last 
also of what may be reckoned the outward triumphs 
of his life. 

For immediate popular efiect, such demonstrations 
as those which characterised that Carnival day of 
1498 may have been a success ; yet for the strengthen- 
ing of real power they were worse than useless. If 
Savonarola's challenge of the supernatural token was 
really a grasp to recover a waning sovereignty, the 
issue ere long showed it to be a dire mistake. Not a 
few sober-minded citizens, who cordially appreciated 
his public spirit and religious aims, were perplexed 
and staggered by what seemed to them the dangerous 
fanaticism of the morning scene enacted in front of 
San Marco. They were afraid, moreover, of the 
troublesome extremes to which the onslaught the 
Friar was instigating upon the " Vanities " might yet 
be carried. And so they quietly abstained henceforth 
from showing themselves on his side. 

Soon the shadows darkened over that strong and 
daring spirit, and severely testing complications of 
circumstance gathered round him at a time when the 
balance of his disciplined practical sobriety was begin- 
ning to give way. The course he was following in 
openly defying the sentence of excommunication was 
bringing on Florence an embarrassment not likely to 
be long or willingly endured. While the Carnival 
celebrations were going on, the Pope was threatening 



THE POPE DEFIED 197 

to lay the city under an Interdict should it continue 
to countenance the Friar in his rebellious obstinacy. 
That was a prospect which could only be contemplated 
with a feeling of dread ; for the effect of the Interdict 
would inevitably be that Florence would be isolated, 
commercial intercourse with it on the part of other 
States would be forbidden on the pain of excom- 
munication, the property of Florentine merchants 
in other cities would be confiscated, and there 
would be a general crippling of Florentine prosperity. 
Thus for Savonarola the situation was increasing in 
perplexity. 

The sermons preached in the Cathedral against the 
validity of the excommunication had been printed one 
by one as soon as delivered, and circulated all over 
Italy and even in the lands of the north. In Rome 
they were read with blazing wrath, the flame of which 
the vindictive Fra Mariano da Gennazzano did his best 
to fan with his furious, coarsely-worded harangues. 
It was in vain that the Florentine ambassadors, Bracci 
and Bonsi, exercised their diplomatic skill in pleading 
the saintly character and useful life of the Fra Giro- 
lamo and the good intentions of the Signory. Alex- 
ander VI. would not be pacified. He despatched a 
Brief to the Signory conveying a clear threat of the 
Interdict unless the recalcitrant Friar — " the son of 
perdition," as it styled him — were sent at once to 
Rome, or at least put under guard and effectually 
silenced. This was accompanied by another Brief to 
the Canons of the Duomo, ordering them to prevent 
him from preaching in their church. Just about the 
time when those Briefs arrived, but before it was 
possible to consider the action to be taken respecting 



198 SAVONAROLA 

them, Savonarola once more preached in the Cathedral. 
It was his last appearance there. He knew of the 
Briefs and their terms, and frankly spoke of them in 
his sermon. " They call me," he said, " the son of 
perdition. Let this be sent back for answer : ' The man 
whom you thus designate has neither harlots nor con- 
cubines, but gives himself up to preaching the faith of 
Christ. His spiritual children, those who listen to his 
doctrine, do not pass their time in the commission of 
crime ; they live virtuously. This friar labours to 
exalt the Church, and you to destroy it.'" He was 
not to be daunted by the menaces of those who were 
responsible for the Church's corruption. " I will 
thunder in their ears," he declared, "after such a 
fashion that they will hear indeed. The time draws 
near to open the casket, and if we but turn the key 
there will come forth such a stench from the Roman 
sink that it will spread through all Christendom, and 
every one will perceive it." 

This reference to the turning of the key was the 
first express hint he had ever given in public of the 
scheme which he had long been meditating, for calling 
a General Council with the object of investigating 
the title of Alexander vi. to hold the Papal chair, 
and of taking steps towards the reformation of the 
Church. 

Bold and determined, however, as he still was, he 
judged it prudent to withdraw from the Cathedral 
pulpit and continue his sermons for the Lent season, 
which had now begun, in his own church of San 
Marco. His reason for this step was the fact that now 
it was not only his own personal position that was in 
question, but also the public interests of the city ; and, 



THE POPE DEFIED 199 

realising this, he decided to leave the newly-elected 
Signory, just entering on office, to deal with the 
message from. Rome as far as possible unhampered by 
any action on his part which might aggravate the 
emergency. 



CHAPTEK XXI 

Gatheeing Troubles 

As it turned out, the majority of the new Signory 
on whom fell the duty of answering the Pope's com- 
mand to compel Savonarola into submission belonged 
to the Arrabbiati faction. They shrank, however, 
from the odium of taking the line of action which 
their own party bias prompted, and called in the aid 
of the other official bodies in the State to share the 
responsibility of decision. A Pratica or conference 
was held, and the subject discussed, with the result 
that a resolution was passed against adopting so 
summary a course as that on which the Pope insisted. 
Against their will, therefore, the Signory were obliged 
to send to Alexander a letter which, in language at 
least, was distinctly in favour of Savonarola. They 
extolled his virtues and the good effect of his teach- 
ing, expressed their inability to face the popular 
disturbance sure to be aroused by any forcible 
attempt to suppress him, and begged his Holiness 
not to withhold his friendly regard and services from 
their city. 

Meanwhile, Savonarola went on with his Lent 
sermons at San Marco, with the Book of Exodus as his 
theme. The church being too inconveniently crowded. 



GATHERING TROUBLES 201 

he was under the necessity of restricting the attend- 
ance on week-days to men only, with the exception 
of Saturday, which he set apart specially for women, 
who desired not to be altogether excluded from his 
ministrations. In those sermons, while enlarging often 
with great beauty, insight, and power on the beliefs 
and experiences of the spiritual life, he was drawn 
occasionally into arguments in his own defence, justi- 
fying his attitude towards the Pope, and maintaining 
the reality of his prophetic mission, as witnessed by 
the occurrence of events which, as all knew, he had 
been enabled to predict. It is pathetic to think of that 
strong voice, which was wont to speak out with the 
ring of full and masterly independence on the vital 
questions of faith and practical duty, reduced now so 
frequently to the apologetic, or even disputatious, tone 
of self -vindication. 

But the development of the drama was hastening 
forward ; the storm which had long been gathering 
was preparing to burst. The insincere, temporising 
letter of the Signory was received by the Pope with 
rage unmeasured. He wanted his orders obeyed ; here 
was nothing but diplomatic evasion. He sent a Brief, 
dated 9th March, in which he told the Signory that 
their recommendations of the Fra Girolamo were 
beside the mark. He had never disapproved of his 
virtues or his preaching ; what he condemned was his 
mischievous obstinacy in despising ecclesiastical cen- 
sures, and he could tolerate his disobedience no longer. 
For the last time he warned and commanded them 
to send the Friar to Rome forthwith, or to confine him 
in strict seclusion within his monastery, until such 
time as he should yield submission and crave for 



202 SAVONAROLA 

absolution. If that were not done, the Interdict would 
be issued, and the city would suffer. 

Again a Pratica was summoned at Florence, and 
there was long and anxious deliberation over the de- 
mands of this menacing document. It was felt to be a 
critical moment, and the tension of feeling was high. 
Abundant testimonies were offered to the value of 
Savonarola's work in the city. Soderini and Valori 
were the chief speakers on the side of abstaining from 
further interference with his preaching. The other 
side was most ably and dexterously argued by Guid' 
Antonio Vespucci, the eminent lawyer who represented 
the views of the aristocratic party. The suspension of 
Savonarola's ministries he professed to deplore as a 
spiritual deprivation to the citizens ; but over against 
that result he pictured the disastrous consequences to 
Florence — the ruin of commerce, and the loss of the 
hope of recovering Pisa — which an offence to the Pope 
would undoubtedly entail. It was not positively 
certain, he said, whether Fra Girolamo held a direct 
commission from God, but it was certain that the Pop^ 
had his power from God, and therefore it was wiser to 
render obedience. Should any wrong be committed by 
complying with the mandate from Rome, it was the 
Pope who was responsible, and not they. 

Vespucci's line of reasoning obviously harmonised 
with the prevailing mood of the assembly. As the 
debate proceeded, it became increasingly apparent that 
the question of the treatment to be dealt out to 
Savonarola was being discussed, not in the light of 
what was due to the Friar himself and to the cause of 
justice and holy living which he, confessedly, repre- 
sented, but in the light of what was most expedient 



GATHERING TROUBLES 203 

for the city's material prosperity. The high note of 
loyalty to right — which might have stirred men's 
hearts and consciences to heroic daring, and made the 
occasion gloriously memorable in history — was never 
sounded. Those who might have been expected to 
sound it — the men who had been most powerfully 
moved by Savonarola's teaching — were too perplexed 
by the difficulty of the situation, and probably also 
were unable to throw off their lingering superstitious 
terror of the baleful effects which a Papal anathema 
might bring upon themselves and their city. 

The decision was referred to a select committee, who, 
on the I7th of March, came to the conclusion that 
Savonarola should be " persuaded " to cease from 
preaching, the persuasion, however, being intended to 
have all the force of a prohibitive command. This was 
communicated by the Council of Ten to Rome through 
Bonsi, the envoy there, with an anxious expression of 
the hope that his Holiness would be satisfied with 
what had been done, and would in his goodness restore 
to the citizens their now silenced spiritual instructor, of 
whose ministrations they were grieved to be deprived. 

Ere this reply was despatched, Savonarola had him- 
self addressed a letter to the Pope, in which he dis- 
played the fearless resolution of his mind in confronting 
the decision on his case, however unfavourable. In 
seeking as a good Christian to defend the faith and 
purify morals, he averred, he had met with nothing but 
trials and tribulations. He told Alexander that he 
had placed his hope in him, only to find that his Holi- 
ness had put it in the power of his enemies, like savage 
wolves, to wreak their cruelty upon him. No hearing 
had been given to the reasons he had advanced in proof 



204 SAVONAROLA 

of his doctrines, his personal innocence, his submission to 
the Church. Henceforth he would turn for hope to Him 
who chooses the weak things of the world to confound 
the strong, and who, as he believed, would help him to 
maintain the truth of the cause for which he suffered, 
and inflict just punishment on those who persecuted 
him and strove to hinder his work. " As for myself," 
he said in conclusion, " I seek no glory of this world, 
but I wait for and desire death. Let your Holiness 
delay no longer, but take heed to your own salvation." 
On the evening of the very day on which the 
resolution was passed, Savonarola received the order of 
the Signory forbidding him to preach. He had just 
held his Saturday service for women, and had spoken 
in terms of gracious tenderness which brought tears to 
every eye. On the day following, the 18th of March, 
the third Sunday in Lent, he mounted the pulpit of 
San Marco once more, and delivered his last sermon. 
He had not sought, he protested, to weaken the Roman 
Church, but rather to augment its strength. Yet he 
would not be subject to the powers of hell, and all 
power that is opposed to good is not of God, but of 
the devil. Oftentimes he had resolved to abstain from 
acting on the things revealed to him, but the word 
of the Lord had been within him as a consuming fire 
in his bones and in his heart, and he had not been able 
to restrain it, because he felt himself all aflame with 
the spirit of God. The order of the Signory had come, 
" but," he said, " we will obtain by our supplications 
that which we may not obtain by sermons ; and we 
exhort all good men to do likewise. O Lord, I pray 
Thee, have mercy on the good, and delay Thy promises 
no longer." Those were Savonarola's farewell words 



GATHERING TROUBLES 205 

from the pulpit to the citizens of Florence. When first 
announcing, in 1489, his intention of preaching in the 
church of San Marco, he had stated, according to 
Burlamacchi, that he would continue to preach in 
Florence for the space of eight years. That period 
had now been fulfilled ; it was just some months over 
eight years since the prediction was made, and at San 
Marco he closed the ministry which then he was about 
to begin. 

There was yet one resource left for the persecuted 
apostle of righteousness. Realising that the hostility 
of the Pope was unrelenting, and that the magistrates 
now chosen by the Florentines were set against him- 
self and bent on playing into the Pope's hands, Savon- 
arola determined to employ the weapon which hitherto 
he had held in reserve. Now was the time, he decided, 
to appeal to the princes of Europe, urging them to 
summon the General Council, on which he relied so 
much for the rectification of the abuses of the Church. 
This was the "turn of the key," the mighty cry 
" Lazarus, come forth," by which, some time before, 
he had vowed to astonish and startle Christendom. 
Now that all efibrts towards conciliation had failed, 
and matters were being driven to extremities, he 
resolved to deal his last daring stroke. And the 
favourable moment for it seemed to have arrived. 
Alexander vi. was becoming increasingly unpopular. 
His avarice, his unblushing nepotism, the scandals of 
his life and court, had aroused bitter feelings both 
in Italy and abroad. Many of the cardinals even 
were ready to welcome a scheme which might be 
expected to rid the Church of the pernicious influence 
of such a man; and one of them, Cardinal Rovere 



2o6 SAVONAROLA 

of San Pietro in Yincoli, who had been Alexanders 
most formidable competitor for the Papal chair, had 
long been plotting to get such a scheme carried into 
eflfect. Charles viii. of France also was supposed to 
be waitino- for some definite encourao-ement to move 
in that very direction. Savonarola had already pre- 
pared the letters which he designed to send to that 
monarch, and to the sovereigns of Spain, Germany, 
England, and Hungary. Those " Letters to the 
Princes" were all substantially the same in purport. 
" The Church is steeped in shame and crime from 
head to foot. You, instead of exerting yourselves 
to deliver her, bow down before the source of all 
this evil. Therefore the Lord is angry and hath left 
the Church for so long without a shepherd. I assure 
you in the word of the Lord that this Alexander is 
no Pope at all, and should not be accounted as such; 
for, besides having attained to the chair of St. Peter 
by the shameless sin of simony, and still daily selling 
benefices to the highest bidder, — besides his other 
vices which are known to all the world, I aflirm also 
that he is not a Christian, and does not believe in 
the existence of God, which is the deepest depth of 
unbelief." That was the introduction; and then the 
princes were enjoined to unite in convoking a Council 
as soon as possible in some suitable and neutral place, 
while he, Savonarola, on his side, grave the assurance 
that God would confirm the truth of his words by 
miraculous signs. 

As a preliminary step, Savonarola, through the aid 
of influential friends, opened communication with the 
Florentine envoys at the chief foreign courts, in- 
forming them of the reasons for the proposal, and 



GATHERING TROUBLES 207 

soliciting their good offices in its behalf. One of 
those friends was Domenico Mazzinghi, who wrote 
to Guasconi, the envoy in France ; but of the two 
copies of the letter, which, for greater safety, Maz- 
zinghi sent off, one was intercepted by the spies of 
Ludovico of Milan, and by him forwarded to the 
Pope. Alexander's rage was remorseless now, a rage 
embittered by terror, for the dread of his life for 
years past had been the possibility of a General 
Council being convened. Savonarola's own letters to 
the princes of Europe were never despatched. Before 
there was time to ascertain, from the correspondence 
with the envoys, whether the way was ready for 
launching the proposal and throwing the ecclesias- 
tical world into commotion, the tempest broke over 
him in Florence itself, and fell upon him with a 
blow which crippled all further power and effort. 



CHAPTER XXII 

The Okdeal by Fire 

It is only too patent that Savonarola's association 
with the party politics of Florence was the main 
cause contributing to his downfall and to the tragedy 
of his career. It provoked opposition to him on 
political grounds, which was malignantly brought to 
bear ao-ainst his relio-ious work and aims. It was 
political antagonism which drove him into collision 
Avith ecclesiastical authority and embroiled him in 
hostile relations with the Pope. Men assailed the 
prophetic claims of the preacher, because the stand 
he took was an obstacle to their partisan designs 
in matters affecting the State. This was at the 
bottom of the persistent persecution which beset him 
even after he had been reduced to silence and shut 
up in his convent by the order of the Signory and 
the Papal ban. His rivals, the Franciscans, now 
received every encourageriient to turn their attacks 
upon him. They had alwaj^s been forward to point 
out the errors of his teaching, but so long as Savon- 
arola held sway in the pulpit and enthralled men 
by the blaze of his eloquence, their jealous cavilling 
and detraction met with little regard. When, how- 
ever, the decree of excommunication came and was 



THE ORDEAL BY FIRE 209 

set at nought, tJioy found their opportunity. People 
were eager to hear the validity of the excommuni- 
cation dincuHHed. The Franciscans of Santa Croce, 
envious of the superior fame gained by the Domini- 
cans of San Marco, were conspicuous by their 
vehemence in this controversy, and from the moment 
that Savonarola was silenced they redoubled their 
zeal in stigmatising his conduct as revolutionary and 
heretical. One of their number, Fra Francesco di 
Puglia, who was preaching in the church of Santa 
Croce (luring that Lent of 1498, was carried away 
so far by the heat of his polemical passion, that he 
declared his readiness to enter a burning fire "along 
with the advcjrsary," as he said, in order to test the 
validity or nullity of the excommunication and the 
truth or error of Savonarola's prophetic pretensions. 
This challenge was at once taken up by Savonarola's 
enthusiastic disciple, Fra Domenico da Pescia, who 
was still preaching on his master's behalf, and eager 
as ever to display his loyalty and devotion. Domenico 
lost no time in publishing the " Conclusions," or pro- 
positions, which he was prepared to prove by accepting 
the fiery ordeal ; namely, that the Church was in 
need of reform, and would be chastised first and then 
restored ; that Florence also would be chastised, and 
afterwards restored to flourish anew ; that the in- 
fidels would be converted to Christianity ; that these 
things would come to pass in that very age; and 
that the excommunication pronounced against Fra 
Cirolamo Savonarola was invalid, and might be dis- 
regarded without sin. 

Savonarola realised the dangerous nature of the 
ground on which his trusty follower was venturing^ 
14 



2 10 SAVONAROLA 

and endeavoured to restrain his imprudent ardour, 
although it was soon evident that he was quite power- 
less to control the issues that had been raised. The 
whole matter was complicated by the strange action 
of the Signory in giving official countenance to the 
carrying out of such a test. They summoned both 
parties to an audience, and called upon them to present 
the terms on which they desired the experiment to 
be made. Fra Domenico's "Conclusions" were duly 
registered. Fra Francesco, however, seeing that 
Domenico was really in earnest, endeavoured to draw 
back from any pledge to undergo the ordeal with 
him ; it was with Fra Girolamo himself, he avowed, 
that he was ready to pass through the fire ; and as 
Fra Girolamo held aloof he retired from the contest, 
putting forward another monk, Fra Giuliano Ron- 
dinelli, as one who was willing in his stead to main- 
tain the challenge with Fra Domenico. Domenico, 
on the other hand, pleaded that Savonarola was 
reserved for higher things, and had still more im- 
portant work to accomplish, and his time had not 
yet come. 

The subject awakened a feverish interest not only 
among the magistrates and the religious orders con- 
cerned, but throughout the city. It was the sensation 
of the hour; the Florentines could talk of nothing 
else ; and all looked forward impatiently to a spectacle 
more dramatically exciting than any which even that 
generation, that had seen so many stirring events, had 
yet witnessed. The Arrabbiati plied their wily arts 
in hastening on the ordeal, in the expectation that 
somehow their great adversary would be crushed or 
disgraced. That wild band of mischief-makers, the 



THE ORDEAL BY FIRE 211 

Compagnacci, brought their influence to bear on the 
temporising, unscrupulous Signory, trusting that at 
length had come their best chance of ruining the man 
they feared, and hated because they feared. The 
Piagnoni, on their part, were zealous for the honour 
and credit of their revered leader, and hoped that he 
would consent to have his mission and message vin- 
dicated by the test proposed, and by the supernatural 
triumph which they fully believed would be given. 
Many of them were ready to accept the challenge for 
him. There was quite a throng of volunteers — re- 
spectable citizens, women, and children even — fervently 
desirous of passing through the fire to prove the truth 
of his teaching and claims ; while the members of his 
own brotherhood of San Marco — and they numbered 
almost three hundred at this date — vied with each 
other in their enthusiastic anxiety to show their 
loyalty by offering themselves for the ordeal. Fra 
Mariano Ughi came early to the front, and friars of 
such distinguished family as Fra Malatesta Sacromoro 
and Fra Roberto Salviati signed a declaration to stake 
their lives. 

To the Signory, this multitude of competitors on the 
one side for the privilege of undergoing the test was 
rather perplexing. A meeting of officials was held on 
30th March, and in the discussions many declared the 
question to be one which the ecclesiastical authorities 
should be left to settle ; but the predominant feeling 
was that the ordeal should be proceeded with as a 
means of quieting the public mind, and healing the 
divisions in the city. Even the sympathisers with 
Savonarola who were present joined in advising that 
the matter should go forward, their hope being that 



212 SAVONAROLA 

the issue would redound to his greater glory. It was 
finally agreed that the ordeal should take place ; 
further, that if the Dominican champion should perish, 
Savonarola must leave the city; or if the Franciscan 
champion, then Fra Francesco must go. Should both 
champions, however, succumb to the flames, the sen- 
tence of banishment was to fall on the Dominicans 
alone ; and if one or other of them refused to enter the 
fire, he and his party should sufier the penalty. 

Savonarola took no active steps to prevent the 
ordeal. When he addressed a large company of his 
followers on the 1st of April at San Marco, he found 
every one eager to face the trial. Ecco mi ! JEcco mi I 
" Behold me ! Behold me, ready to go into the fire 
for the glory of the Lord ! " was the cry which rose 
round him on every side. The enthusiasm thus ex- 
hibited struck him as a sign from God that a miracle 
was going to be wrought. In this assurance he was 
encouraged by a vision of Fra Silvestro Maruffi, one 
of the San Marco brethren, a man of highly nervous 
and emotional temperament, whose strange hallucina- 
tions and hysterical fancies of communications from 
the unseen had often exercised an undue influence on 
Savonarola's mind, and confirmed that tendency, so 
perilously ensnaring to him, to indulge in pious delu- 
sions. This weak and excitable brother now announced 
that he had seen the guardian angels of Fra Girolamo 
and Fra Domenico, who had declared to him that Fra 
Domenico would pass through the fire unhurt. 

It was hoped by many, alike on his own side and 
on the side of his opponents, that circumstances would 
force Savonarola to come forward and submit to the 
test himself ; and there was much surprise, and even 



THE ORDEAL BY FIRE 213 

disappointment, created by his studious evasion of the 
challenge which Era Francesco had laid down. It was 
only to be expected, men thought, that he who had 
claimed so peculiarly favoured a relation with Heaven 
should be prepared in person to subject his claims to 
some form of arbitrament in which the will of Heaven 
could be emphatically revealed. In all this he was 
only reaping the fruits of his own extravagant con- 
ceptions of his mission, and of the misguided insistence 
on his exceptional standing and character as the in- 
spired messenger of God. His adherents were led to 
entertain the confidence that no fire could touch the 
Prophet of the Most High, and they were eager to see 
his credit established by the triumphant Divine mani- 
festation which they were sure would be vouchsafed. 
His enemies deemed that they had good grounds for 
demanding his acceptance of an ordeal which would 
put his pretensions to the proof, and^ rejoiced in the 
prospect of having him exposed to a danger from which 
they did not believe he could possibly escape. To such 
views and expectations, which he knew to be widely 
prevalent, he replied in a printed statement on the 
subject, arguing that he was keeping himself in reserve 
for a greater work than such contests about the 
validity or nullity of the excommunication — the re- 
formation of morals and of the Church; and that if 
his adversaries meant to prove the validity of his 
excommunication, they should first answer the argu- 
ments he had advanced, and then it would be time 
to settle the question by fire. As to the proposed 
experiment, he said that, should it indeed take place, 
which he was disposed to doubt, he had little hesita- 
tion in believing that they who went into it truly 



214 SAVONAROLA 

inspired by the Lord would emerge without harm from 
the flames. His attitude in the matter, it must be 
allowed, was sufficiently reasonable and honest, but it 
was one which, in the confused and excited state of 
the public mind at the moment, was seriously com- 
promising to his reputation for consistency. 

The Pope was duly informed of the whole affair. 
Bonsi had told him of what was transpiring; and, 
besides, the brothers of San Marco wrote a letter to 
his Holiness, explaining the circumstances, and plead- 
ing the justice of the cause which the trial by fire was 
intended to decide. Alexander, it appears, did not 
relish the idea of having his sentence of excommuni- 
cation subjected to any such test; in his view its 
validity rested on his own authority as the occupant 
of the pontifical chair. The Signory at Florence, 
learning of his disinclination to sanction the ordeal, 
and wakening up at last to the gravity and awkward- 
ness of the situation, sought refuge in delay, hoping 
that some messao^e mio^ht come from Rome which 
would put an ecclesiastical prohibition on the course 
proposed. The 6th of April had been originally fixed 
for the great event; it was now postponed to the 
following day. It was, moreover, formally decided 
that Fra Domenico da Pescia and Fra Giuliano Rondi- 
nelli should be accepted as the champions, and that in 
the event of Fra Domenico beinty burned Savonarola 
should leave Florence within three hours. Fra Dome- 
nico's ardour increased as the day approached ; he fully 
believed in a supernatural deliverance. Rondinelli had 
no such assurance ; he expressed his conviction that 
both w^ould perish in the flames; but he was quite 
willing himself to sufler " for the good of souls." 



THE ORDEAL BY FIRE 215 

For several days the friars on both sides devoted 
themselves to prayer and fasting. When at last the 
7th of April dawned, the commotion of feeling in the 
city was wrought up to an extraordinary degree. The 
prohibitory message which the Signory anxiously 
looked for from the Pope had not arrived ; and accord- 
ingly the requisite preparations were made for the fate- 
ful experiment which monopolised every one's thoughts. 
In the Piazza della Signoria, the scene of many a stir- 
ring and sensational episode in history, a platform was 
erected, sixty yards long and ten yards broad, stretch- 
ing out from the front of the Palazzo Vecchio, and 
on it were piled two rows of faggots saturated with 
oil and pitch, with a narrow space between, along 
which the champions were intended to pass. At the 
request of Savonarola, it was arranged that the fuel 
should first be lighted at the farther end of the plat- 
form, and that when the two friars entered at the 
other the torch should then be applied to hem them in 
behind. To provide against a tumult, the openings 
into the piazza were guarded by soldiers ; troops were 
stationed in front of the palace balcony; but each 
party had taken the precaution to arm a section of 
their own adherents and place them where they might 
be of use in case of need. Thus three hundred Piagnoni, 
with Marcuccio Salviati at their head, were drawn up 
to protect Savonarola and his monks from San Marco ; 
while on the other side of the piazza, as a defence to 
the Franciscans, stood a band of five hundred Com- 
pagnacci, under their dashing, violent leader Dolfo 
Spini, whose presence brought a dangerous element 
into the scene. 

During the time these preparations were going on. 



2i6 SAVONAROLA 

Savonarola was celebrating Mass at San Marco. At 
the close of the ceremony he went into the pulpit and 
addressed the gathering of monks and devoted friends 
in a tone which, though exceedingly solemn, yet be- 
trayed a hesitation and diffidence in him quite unusual. 
" I cannot be certain," he said, " that the ordeal will 
take place, for that does not depend upon us ; but I am 
able to tell you that if it does take place, the victory 
will certainly be ours." He appealed to God to bear 
witness that he and his side had been challenged, and 
that they could not refuse to defend His honour ; and 
when he turned to the congregation and asked, " Are 
you willing to serve God, O my people ? " every voice 
answered, " Yes," with prompt and enthusiastic fer- 
vour. Then he told the women present to remain in 
the church and continue in prayer till the trial was 
over. 

Meanwhile an enormous multitude had assembled in 
the Piazza della Signoria. The great open space was 
filled with a mass of people, that grew ever more dense 
and closely packed as the hour of the great event drew 
near. The windows, balconies, and roofs of the houses 
all round were thronged ; every pillar, cornice, or piece 
of statuary was taken advantage of by eager sight- 
seers. It seemed as if the whole population of Florence 
had crowded there together, strung to the highest pitch 
of expectation. For rarely in human experience is it 
given to witness an actual manifestation of the super- 
natural, and such a manifestation was now looked for 
by the great majority in that immense assemblage, a 
spectacle of miraculous interposition which would feed 
the love of the marvellous so deeply seated in the 
human heart, and which would supply a sensation 



THE ORDEAL BY FIRE 217 

that would dazzle the eyes, set the nerves thrilling, and 
hold its place in the memory till the end of life. 

The Loggia dei Lanzi, that interesting structure, 
with its graceful columns and arches, and its striking 
statues, which stands on the left side of the Piazza, not 
far from the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, was set 
apart for the accommodation of the two rival bodies 
of friars — the half nearest the Palazzo being allotted 
to the Franciscans, the other half farther off to the 
Dominicans from San Marco. The Franciscans were 
already in their places, having come early, without any 
demonstration, and now stood waiting in their frocks 
of grey. It had just struck twelve, when the sound of 
singing was heard, and Savonarola and his followers 
appeared. They marched into the square, as they had 
done through the streets, in solemn procession, the 
monks first, between two and three hundred in number ; 
then Fra Domenico, arrayed in a red cope, a cross in 
his hand, and bearing himself with serene and exalted 
mien ; then Savonarola himself, on whom at once all 
eyes were fixed, clad in the white robe of the priest, 
and carrying before him the Blessed Sacrament ; while 
a band of faithful disciples, holding aloft lighted 
torches, filed in behind, all chaunting the psalm, " Let 
God arise, and let His enemies be scattered," and re- 
peating the first verse as a refrain, which was taken 
up by a multitude of voices in the crowd with a fer- 
vour and force so startling that the very ground under 
foot, as Burlamacchi relates, appeared to tremble. The 
friars mounted the steps and moved into their com- 
partment in the Loggia, Savonarola placed the Sacra- 
ment on the altar set there beforehand for the purpose, 
and he and Fra Domenico knelt for a few minutes in 



2 IS SAVONAROLA 

front of it till the chauntino' ceased. Then all was 
ready; the vast multitude was hushed, and watched 
with palpitating emotions for the issue of that strange 
contest which had brought them together. 

Savonarola had risen from his knees and faced the 
crowd, calm and confident. He had been troubled with 
doubts as to the moral legitimac}^ of the trial, which 
nevertheless, through pressure of circumstances, he had 
been forced to sanction. But now he looked as if all 
misgivings had vanished. He felt convinced that his 
cause was the cause of a righteous God, and that, as 
this mode of vindicating himself and his position had 
not been of his own choosing, surely God would be 
with him and show His favour by preserving the 
champion who was risking life on his side. As for 
Fra Domenico, he stood there with radiant counten- 
ance and dauntless heart, anxious to confront the test 
which would redound, as he believed, to the glory of 
God and his beloved leader. 

There was some delay, however, which was unintel- 
ligible to the mass of spectators. The members of the 
Signory had not taken their position on the Palace 
balcony. The Franciscan champion, Fra Rondinelli, 
was not to be seen, neither was his instigator, Fra 
Francesco di Pugiia, in whose behalf he had pledged 
himself to undergo the ordeal. The fact was that both 
were engaged inside the palace in anxious consultation 
with the Signory over certain difiiculties, which their 
vacillation at the last moment had moved them to 
raise. They objected, first of all, to Domenico's enter- 
ing the flames with the red cope which he wore ; then, 
when this had been removed, they found fault with 
his ordinary vestments as being possibly enchanted 



THE ORDEAL BY FIRE 219 

against the fire. Savonarola protested against an ob- 
jection so frivolous, but at last yielded, and Domenico 
was taken into the palace to change clothes with 
Alessandro Strozzi, one of the San Marco brethren, 
who, when he heard his name called, in his sanguine 
fervour imagined that he was to have the honour of 
meeting the challenge, and threw himself at Savon- 
arola's feet to receive his blessing, with the Te Deum 
Laudamus bursting from his lips. The delay thus 
caused was exceedingly tantalising to the waiting mul- 
titude, who soon became restless and indignant. There 
were cries for Savonarola himself to step forward and 
begin the trial. Then came an outbreak of wild dis- 
order, during which the armed Compagnacci made a 
dash across the square, intent on doing violence to the 
object of their hate, but were beaten back by Salviati, 
who, at the head of his band of Piagnoni, drew a line 
on the ground in front of the Loggia, and dared them 
to cross it. Suddenly a thunderstorm broke overhead, 
and rain fell in drenching torrents. But the crowd 
waited on, subdued into comparative quietness once 
more, and impatient for the spectacle which they hoped 
might yet be forthcoming. 

The storm ceased as suddenly as it had begun, 
but fresh difficulties arose. Rondinelli remained 
still in the Palazzo ; he and his supporters insisted that 
Domenico should put aside the crucifix which he 
carried in his hands. This Domenico agreed to do, but 
expressed his determination to enter the fire bearing 
tlie Sacrament instead. The Franciscans exclaimed 
against this proposal with indignant horror. It would 
be impious presumption, they argued, thus to expose 
the Sacred Host. On the otlier hand, Domenico and 



220 SAVONAROLA 

Savonarola pleaded, if the Host were burned, it would 
be the accidents only which would be consumed, the 
substance would remain. The discussion on the point 
appeared endless: There was a constant moving to 
and fro, a coming and going between the palace and 
the Loggia, but with no definite result ; neither party- 
would give wa}^ Again the crowd became restless. 
Hours had passed ; the day, which was expected to be 
so sensationally eventful, had worn by, wasted in seem- 
ingly fruitless disputes; the shadows of night were 
gathering, and nothing had happened, nothing been 
done; and murmurs of discontent were everywhere 
heard. 

At length, as darkness set in, the Signory, who had 
been painfully perplexed all day, realising the deadlock 
to which the matter had come, decided to suspend the 
ordeal, and gave orders to both parties to retire to their 
convents. Furious was the rage of the swarming mass 
of people when that order became known. Weary, 
hungry, drenched, and cramped by the tight pressure 
they had so long been obliged to bear, they were in no 
mood to accept the disappointment which now fell upon 
them. They had waited and waited through the slow- 
moving hours for the sight of that supernatural marvel 
which they had been persuaded to look for, and no 
marvel had been wrought. ExcLimations of bitterness 
and of baffled expectation arose on every hand, and it 
was against Savonarola chiefly that the irritation was 
turned. Why, men asked in querulous scorn, had 
he personally hung back, and deprived them of the 
miracle which he had so often proclaimed as certain 
to be given in attestation of his mission from God ? 
Even large numbers who had warmly admired him, and 



THE ORDEAL BY FIRE 221 

counted themselves amongst his followers, showed their 
an^ry vexation. They, like others, were craving for a 
supernatural token which should prove the truth of 
the great Friar's teaching, and which, moreover, would 
gratify their pride in him as their leader; and they 
deemed themselves sorely aggrieved by what seemed 
to them his reprehensible weakness in not stepping 
forward in person and volunteering to settle the whole 
question by daring the fiery test alone, and giving the 
sign desired. The revulsion of feeling was so great, 
and the tumult of resentment so strong, that Savon- 
arola found it essential to request a guard from the 
Signory to protect him and his monks on their way 
home through the streets. The request was complied 
with, but the march to San Marco was a sad contrast 
to the solemn dignity and exalted enthusiasm of the 
morning procession. Slowly and with difficulty Savon- 
arola and his company of friars moved on, assailed by 
the reproaches, gibes, and imprecations of the mob, 
and only saved from positive violence by the armed 
escort accompanying them, and by the reverence felt 
for the Sacrament which he was carrying back in his 
hands. 

It was a melancholy downfall, a veritable tragedy 
of reverse. Here was the man who, in a momentous 
crisis, had been the dictator of Florentine affairs, the 
idol of the people for several years, their lawgiver, 
their spiritual director, the eloquent prophet-preacher 
on whose lips they had hung, and who had swayed 
them in glowing fervour or in tremulous penitential 
awe — now disowned, and turned upon with ruthless 
bitterness, and that by the very people amongst whom 
his best work had been performed and his greatest 



222 SAVONAROLA 

triumphs won. It was not because of any imworthiness 
in himself, nor because of anything sinister in his aims, 
nor any deterioration in his character. His strong 
and lofty soul had lost none of its strenuous nobility of 
purpose. But he had been carried away with increasing 
readiness by pious self-delusions, by errors of the fancy 
born of morbid religious excitement, and by the 
beguiling consciousness of exceptional insight into the 
ways of God. And hence, mistakenly, but honestly 
enough, he had advanced claims to Divine inspiration 
wdiich hred men's minds and led them to look for some 
signal demonstration of his heavenly power. And 
when the expectations thus kindled were all of a 
sudden baulked and quenched, it was but natural 
that there should be a wild rebound, a spasm of 
indio'nant resentment, in which all the admiration and 
faith he had evoked towards himself were shaken. 
The temper of the crowd, and the execrations hurled 
at Savonarola that evening, as the convent gates closed 
behind him, made it abundantly evident that the spell 
was broken. The prophetic halo which had surrounded 
him in the eyes of the people was gone. The wand of 
the magician had crumbled in his hands. 

The supplications of the women in the convent 
church had been maintained throuo-h the whole of 
that anxious day. Savonarola went in, made his 
way to the pulpit, and spoke to them a few words 
in explanation of what had occurred, counselled them 
and the brethren who had come in with him to live 
a godly life, and then, after the Te Demn had been 
sung, dismissed them with his blessing. 

Painful must have been his reflections as he shut 
himself up in his cell, at the end of the long corridor, 



TIIIC ORDKAL JiV MRE 223 

iliai nielli. II(;c(juId not hut know ilinX ilic malignant 
purpoHt; oT Iu'h (;n(rMii(;H liad lj(;(;n ^airK^J, Uial IiIh j)Owcr 
lia'l })('A'.n .s})a,lL(;j(id, thai liis cr(;(Jil wiili tlic citizcnH 
wan rnincfl. What 8elf-quoHtioning« racked his mind, 
o»- what chillH of diHCOurao;(;iiient cairio ovc.r liini, no 
(jno can tell. But thin ccitainly wo know, from what 
his HubMccjUcnt dcincanour revealed, that ]\ih loyalty to 
(^jd and hin own kouI held i'a.st, his Hpirit kept true to 
itw hi^h(;Ht aijuH, and his courage survived un(|uelled to 
confront th(i dai'k eata.str-o[)he which was casting its 
shadov/ ov<ir his path. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

The Bursting of the Stoem 

The sensational project of the Ordeal by Fire had ended 
in a fiasco. While this result was regarded by the 
Arrabbiati as the very triumph for their designs on 
which they had built their hopes, it was apparently 
accepted by Savonarola as a death-blow to his personal 
reputation, and to that singular moral ascendancy 
which he had so long) been permitted to wield. It is 
evident that he frankly recognised the fatal termina- 
tion to his career, now ominously drawing nigh. The 
day following the foiled experiment was Palm Sunday, 
and in the morning a congregation of worshippers 
assembled in San Marco Church. He appeared among 
them, and in a brief address declared his readiness to 
give his life for his flock, and bade them a loving and 
sorrowful farewell. 

For some hours the excitement still working in the 
breasts of the Florentine populace was in large measure 
outwardly suppressed; but later in the day, when 
numerous parties of the Friar's yet unshaken adherents 
sought to enter the Duomo, where Fra Mariano Ughi, 
one of those who had offered to pass through the fire, 
was expected to preach, they found themselves hustled, 
insulted, and worried with scornful jeers. The Com- 

224 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 225 

pagnacci were there in strong force, both inside the 
building and at the doors, and it was obvious at once 
that violence was to be used to prevent the service 
being held. Amid the confusion and rough treatment 
some one was provoked to retaliate ; swords were 
drawn, and there was a rush for the street. There, 
meanwhile, bands of wild lads had been stationed, 
waiting to pelt the faithful Piagnoni with stones. 
" To San Marco, to San Marco ! " cried the reckless 
Compagnacci, and the hurriedly gathering mob re- 
sponded to the cry. On their way through the streets 
they attacked an inoffensive man w^ho was singing a 
psalm as he went to vespers, and with irreverent gibes 
ran him through with a spear. Another, a devout 
spectacle-maker, who stepped from his door, slippers in 
hand, to remonstrate with the rioters, was struck dead 
by one cruel blow. 

The vesper service was just closing when the church 
of San Marco was reached, and the kneeling congre- 
gation, startled by the volley of stones which came 
crashing through the windows, hastily dispersed. The 
church doors and the gates of the convent were at once 
shut and securely barred, a small party of about thirty 
loyally attached citizens remaining to lend their aid 
in the defence. Without Savonarola's knowledge, but 
with the connivance of certain of the brothers, a few 
of those friends had, during the previous days, made 
preparations for withstanding a siege, and had secretly 
brought into the convent a supply of weapons of 
various kinds, ammunition, and even, it is said, cannons. 
The arms were now produced, and a small number of 
the monks — about fifteen or twenty only, as far as can 
be ascertained — -joined the laymen in equipping them- 
15 



226 SAVONAROLA 

selves for the fray. Many more were disposed to take 
part in the striiogie, but were restrained b}^ the admo- 
nitions of Savonarohi, who exhorted them not to stain 
their hands with blood. His remonstrances, however, 
seconded though they were by the earnest entreaties of 
Fra Domenico, had no eii'ect on the few ardent spirits 
— foremost among them Fra Benedetto, the skilful 
miniature painter, and Fra Luca della Eobbia — wlio 
had already donned their accoutrements and seized the 
weapons which they were impatient to employ. Seeing 
that his words were in vain, and hearing the noise of 
the furious attack outside, he hurriedly put on his 
priest's cope, took a cruciiix in his hand as his only 
protection, and bent his steps towards the gate, to 
surrender himself at once to the raging crowd, saying 
as he did so, " It is on m}^ account that this storm has 
arisen." The throng of brothers and citizens pressed 
round him, and with urgent expostulations succeeded 
in holding him back from his purpose. 

There was a brief lull in the uproar in the Piazza ; 
but when a messenger arrived from the Signory — who 
had been sitting in consultation through the afternoon 
— conveying an order that the defenders should lay 
down their arms, and that Savonarola should g-o into 
banishment within twelve hours, the onset on the 
convent was reneAved. It was then that Savonarola's 
old and trusted friend, Francesco Valori, Avho had been 
actively engaged in the defence, left the convent by 
climbing over the garden wall, his object being, as is 
supposed, to look after the safety of his own household, 
and also to rall}^ the more staunch Piagnoni to their 
master's aid. Yalori reached his home only to find it 
soon surrounded by a crowd of rioters, who threatened 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 227 

to sack it and burn it to the ground. His wife, drawn 
in alarm to the window on hearing the tumult, was shot 
dead by a bolt from a crossbow. A few minutes after- 
wards, an official came from the Signory to summon 
Valori himself at once to the Palace ; and as he obeyed, 
firm and fearless as ever, and confident in his own 
integrity, he was set upon and slain, ere he had gone far 
on the way, by some kinsmen of Rudolfi and Torna- 
buoni, in revenge for the part he had taken in procur- 
ing the condemnation and execution of those and the 
other Medicean conspirators in the previous year. 

The mob around San Marco increased as the dark- 
ness of that Palm Sunday evening fell, and the assault 
on the convent waxed fiercer. Fire was applied to the 
doors, and the most determined efforts were made to force 
an entrance into the building. Savonarola, calling the 
monks together, led them singing in procession through 
the cloisters, and then into the choir of the church, 
telling them that prayer was the only lawful weapon 
for them to use. The majority of the laymen present 
were subdued into reverence, and came in behind to 
join in the act of w^orship. There, in the dimly-lighted 
sanctuary, he and they continued to kneel, chaunting 
the Litany, " Save Thy people, Lord," and preparing 
their minds for death, if so it should be, by the sacred 
exercises of devotion. Amid the noise of the rabble 
without, the battering at the gates, and every sign of 
menacing danger, Savonarola put aside all attempt at 
warlike defence, and kept his company of brothers 
and followers long prostrate in supplication before 
the Almighty ; and thus together they awaited the 
development of events. 

At last, by scaling the walls, many of the assailants 



2 28 SAVONAROLA 

gained access to the cloisters, and the younger monks 
and other helpers who had armed for the conflict 
hurried off to make what resistance they could. There 
was a scene of clamour and confusion in which the 
grotesque and the pathetic were strangely mingled. 
The zealous brothers, with breastplates over their 
Dominican robes and helmets on their heads, brandished 
a halberd, a sword, or an arquebus. Some fought with 
lighted torches, or with metal crosses, shouting aloud, 
Viva Cristo ! Some, led by Fra Benedetto, mounted 
aloft and poured down a shower of stones and tiles 
upon their opponents. And even amid blows and 
bruises and bleeding wounds, the loyalty displayed 
was touching. A young man, mortally stricken, was 
borne into the choir, and, after receiving the Sacrament, 
expired with the words, which he had often heard his 
beloved master repeat, on his lips, " Behold how good 
and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in 
unity," and declaring with a smile on his face, " I have 
never been so happy as now." Some one rang the 
convent bell, tolling out an appeal to the city for 
assistance, but the only answer that came was a fresh 
decree from the Signory, pronouncing all to be rebels 
who did not leave the convent within an hour; and 
accordingly several friends, realising the hopelessness 
of the struggle, deemed it advisable to retire to their 
homes. 

At length the doors of the church were burned 
through, and as the smoke became suffocating and the 
mob with volleys of shot were pushing in, Savonarola, 
who maintained an unresisting attitude throughout, 
marched his friars and all who were not engaged in the 
fight, back along the cloisters into the convent library, 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 229 

where, in kneeling posture before the Sacrament, the 
chaunting of the Litanies was resumed, while in other 
parts of the convent the din of strife went on. The 
prayerful vigil was interrupted by another affecting 
instance of devotion. One of Savonarola's disciples, an 
obscure tradesman of the city, was brought in wounded, 
pleading to see the master, at whose feet he bent with 
the fervent request that he might be received into the 
brotherhood. It was Savonarola's last act of authority 
to grant his wish, and to invest him with the friar's 
cloak. 

About midnight a peremptory order came from the 
Signory, commanding Savonarola, Fra Domenico, and 
Fra Silvestro to deliver themselves up at the Palace 
without delay. They were assured of a safe return as 
soon as the tumult was quelled ; but should they resist, 
the warning was given that the convent would be 
stormed by artillery. Savonarola was prepared to 
surrender, but as the order had not been conveyed in 
writing, and the leading brethren were suspicious of 
treachery, the officers were sent back for the formal 
document on which alone reliance could be placed. In 
the interval of waiting, Savonarola drew the sorrow- 
ing company closer round him, and, addressing them 
as his " children," with deep feeling and strong faith 
spoke to them a few parting words. Before God and 
in presence of the Blessed Sacrament he reasserted 
the truth of his doctrines. What he had taught, he 
avowed, he had received from God, who was his witness 
in heaven that he did not lie. He did not know, he 
said, that the whole city would so soon turn against 
him, yet he was content that the will of the Lord 
should be done. " My last counsel to you is this : let 



2 30 SAVONAROLA 

faith, patience, and prayer be your weapons. I leave 
you with anguish and grief to give myself into my 
enemies' hands. I do not know whether they will take 
my life, but I am certain that if I must die, I shall be 
able to aid you in heaven more than I have been able 
to do on earth. Take comfort, embrace the cross, and 
by it you will find the harbour of salvation." Then, 
to fortify his spirit for whatever fate was in store, he 
confessed to Fra Domenico and received the Sacrament. 
But there was a Judas in the camp. Fra Malatesta 
Sacromoro, the very man who had zealously signified 
his willingness to accept the ordeal of fire on his 
master's behalf a few days before, had been so shaken 
in his steadfastness by the disappointing turn events 
had taken, that at this most trying moment he con- 
descended to play the traitor's part. By his advice, 
now secretly tendered, the Compagnacci storming the 
convent were urged to hurry on the Signory in 
sending the written decree of arrest. And soon the 
decree arrived, with the commander of the Palace 
guard and his men to enforce its demands. Savonarola 
was entreated by his friends to escape over the walls 
and flee, but the remark interposed by Malatesta, 
" Should not the shepherd lay down his life for the 
sheep ? " so deeply touched him that he at once 
banished the thoup'ht from his mind. Turnino* to the 
brethren, he embraced them with tender aflectionate- 
ness — Malatesta among the first — and took his sad 
farewell. " My dear brothers," he said, " remember 
you have no need to doubt. The work of the Lord 
will go forward without ceasing, and my death will 
only hasten it on." Amid the tears and sobs of 
the men who had known by intimate fellowship his 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 231 

worth and truth and faithful kindness, he left his 
beloved San Marco for ever, and, along with the always 
devoted Fra Domenico, gave himself up to the officials 
appointed to make the arrest. 

When he appeared outside, with his hands tied 
behind him, the mad glee of the crowd knew no 
bounds. The glare of the torches carried by the guards 
lit up a sea of wild, jeering faces, every face turned in 
triumphant derision on the victim of political animosity, 
ecclesiastical corruption, and, alas, of popular fickleness 
and ingratitude. Stones were hurled at him, insults 
heaped upon him, cries of execration and foul reproach 
howled in his ears, as he was led through those streets 
which he had so often trodden before on errands of 
usefulness, or in devout procession with his array of 
monks, chaunting psalms of praise. Those who could 
get near enough in the press assailed him with the 
most vulgar indignities. Some, flashing their lanterns 
in his face, called out, " There goes the true light." 
Others struck him, and with blasphemous scoff cried, 
" Prophesy, who is it that smote thee ? " One kicked 
him from behind, with the coarse jest, "There is the 
seat of his prophetic power." His escort were obliged 
to cross their halberds over his head to shield him from 
savage blows. 

Thus, in the dead of night, while many who still 
loved and honoured him were uncertain as to their 
line of conduct, and remained quietly in their homes, 
and while others — indeed, the larger proportion of the 
Florentine citizens — who had once been his admirers, 
were cooled in their sympathies and allowed matters 
to take their course, the devoted, unselfish benefactor 
of Florence, whose zeal for its welfare had led him 



232 SAVONAROLA 

only too frankly to reprove its sins, was loaded with 
outrage by his worst enemies and by the reckless 
rabble who played into their hands ; and amid frantic 
uproar and violence was marched, a prisoner, to the 
Palace of the Signory. There, after a few questions 
by the Gonfaloniere as to whether he persisted in the 
assertion of a Divine revelation in his teaching, to 
which he returned a clear affirmative reply, he was 
shut up alone in a cell in the bell-tower — the faithful 
Fra Domenico being confined in another part of the 
buildins:. Fra Silvestro, who had been included in the 
order to surrender, had been in hiding and could not 
be found when the arrest at San Marco was made. 
Next morning, however, he emerged from his place of 
concealment, and by means of Fra Malatesta, as some 
witnesses averred, he was forced to give himself up at 
the Palace, though his weak, nervous soul rendered 
him but poorly fitted to endure the tribulation which 
his stronger companions were facing so nobly. In the 
course of the day, nineteen others, both friars and 
citizens, who had made themselves conspicuous in de- 
fending the convent, were also laid under arrest. 

Intelligence flew to Rome, and the Pope was highly 
gratified. Through the letters intercepted by the 
agents of Duke Ludovico of Milan, he had become 
fully informed of Savonarola's efforts to incite the 
Powers of Europe to summon a General Council, the 
first business of which, as he knew, would be to examine 
his own title to hold the pontifical throne ; and he was 
delighted at the downfall of the prime mover in such 
a project. He sent a Brief to the Signory, expressing 
his great pleasure that the scandal caused by the 
excommunicated Friar was now brought to an end, 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 233 

praising them for what they had done, granting ab- 
solution from all their recent offences towards the Holy 
Church and its head, and promising plenary indulgence 
and restoration to the Church to all followers of the 
Friar who should repent of their errors. The Brief, 
besides, stipulated that Savonarola and his two asso- 
ciates, after being examined, should be sent to Rome 
for the final settlement of their case, under the charge 
of special delegates whom his Holiness would himself 
appoint. Alexander wrote also to the Franciscans of 
Santa Croce, commending them for their "holy zeal 
and evangelical charity," which he would hold in 
lasting remembrance ; and to Francesco di Puglia, ex- 
horting him to persevere in the good and pious work 
till the evil should be entirely destroyed. The Duke 
of Milan, too, was profuse in his congratulations; a 
powerful obstacle to his designs on the independence 
of Florence was removed. 

So Savonarola's foes rejoiced over him. With his 
voice smothered, his power shattered, his followers 
cowed, or paralysed by perplexity; a captive in the 
grasp of men who sought his ruin, — all things conspired 
to deepen his humiliation; and even that exalted 
potentate, the King of France, to whom he had looked 
with such sanguine, fanciful hope as the divinely- 
intended saviour of Italy, was no longer able to aid 
him. Charles viil. had died suddenly of apoplexy, in 
a wretched hovel at Amboise, on the very day when 
Savonarola and his champion were confronting the 
Florentine crowd in view of the expected ordeal by 
fire. Henceforth, all confidence in man was vain. 

Ere the Pope's congratulatory Brief arrived, the 
examination and trial of Savonarola had already begun, 



234 SAVONAROLA 

and the record of its proceedings forms a miserable and 
melancholy story. At the very outset, the Signory, on 
the plea of State necessity, took the unconstitutional 
step of decreeing that a fresh election of the Councils 
of the Ten and of the Eight should be immediately 
held, although the complete term of those at the time 
in office had not expired. The sole reason for such a 
course was that the members of those Councils, of the 
Ten especially, were known to be favourable to the 
Friar, and it was desired to fill the posts with men 
more decidedly in sympathy with the party that had 
now risen into power. Their end was gained, and on 
the 11th of April a commission of seventeen was 
appointed to conduct the examination, with full power 
to use such means as they might find expedient to 
extort the evidence required. It was clear at once 
that no attempt was made to secure an impartial 
tribunal, for among the commissioners chosen were 
some of Savonarola's bitterest opponents, such as Piero 
degli Alberti, and the vindictive, hot-headed Dolfo 
Spini himself. Indeed, the whole arrangements for 
the trial were so manifestly unjust, that one of the 
members elected for the commission, Bartolo Zati, 
indignantly declined to act, declaring that he " would 
have no share in this murder." 

Holy Week though it was, when men professing the 
Christian faith should be moved to patience, mercy, 
and charity, the judges of Savonarola displayed a ruth- 
less eagerness in dealing out harshness and cruelty. 
The charges brought against him had reference to his 
religious teaching, his political conduct, and his pro- 
phecies; and to elicit incriminating replies from him 
on these points, he was taken to the upper hall of the 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 235 

Bargello, and there questioned and put to the torture. 
It was a barbarous procedure, a survival of the severe 
mediaeval methods of justice, which the boasted culture 
of Florence at that date should have rendered impos- 
sible. Savonarola was subjected to the horrible agony 
of the pulley ; drawn up by a rope attached to the 
roof of the building, then let suddenly drop with a 
violent jerk, which strained and tore every muscle of 
his finely-strung, sensitive frame, enfeebled as it was 
by many anxious toils and rigid austerities. This was 
repeated again and again, and for days in succession, 
with the result that after a few " turns " of the rope he 
was thrown into delirium. "O Lord, take away my 
life," he was forced to cry in one of his worst spasms 
of anguish. And yet, when the grim infliction of the 
day was over, and he was sent back pained and 
wrenched to his cell, he could prostrate himself before 
God, and, like the Great Example, pray for his per- 
secutors, "Father, forgive them, for they know not 
what they do." 

After the trial had gone on for several days, the 
Papal Brief, already spoken of, arrived. Highly pleased 
as the authorities were by its general terms, they felt 
gravely concerned with regard to the demand that 
Savonarola and his two companions should be sent to 
Rome. To yield to such a demand, it was thought, 
would be an affront to the dignity of Florence. In 
the Council held to debate the point, it was decided 
to make an evasive reply ; to ofler the fairest excuses 
possible for keeping the imprisoned friars in their own 
hands, to proceed with the trial, and meanwhile to take 
advantage of the Pope's favourable mood to press the 
Signory's oft-renewed request for permission to levy a 



236 SAVONAROLA 

tax on ecclesiastical property in the city. Accordingly, 
the trial went forward, though the statements wrung 
from Savonarola were admitted to be utterly insuffi- 
cient as proof of his guilt. A notary of the city, 
however, offered his services in reporting the evidence, 
pledging himself to put it in such a form as would 
show a clear ground for conviction. This was Ser 
Ceccone, who had once been sheltered by Savonarola, 
and saved from the peril of exile or death which his 
political misdeeds had incurred, and who now,, after 
professing for some years to be a follower, turned 
against his benefactor. To the disgrace of the Floren- 
tine magistrates then in office, and of the commissioners 
who undertook the responsibility of the examination, 
Ser Ceccone, with the promise of four hundred ducats 
as his reward, was engaged to manipulate the deposi- 
tions given in the trial, and make them suit the 
purpose intended. That is an established historical 
fact. Day after day Savonarola was made to writhe 
under the rope and pulley torture, aggravated at times 
by the application of burning coals to the soles of his 
feet as he hung suspended; and day after day the 
skilful notar^r twisted the often incoherent words 
which the maddening pain drew from him till their 
meaning was scandalously falsified. By alterations, 
omissions, and interpolations, the most innocent utter- 
ances were converted into confessions of damaging 
significance. Yet, notwithstanding the frequent in- 
coherence of his replies, Savonarola remained mar- 
vellously firm in his asseveration of the truth of his 
teaching and the sincerity of his motives in seeking 
nothing but the good of Florence in his political action. 
There he was resolute and inflexible. It was only on 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 237 

the question of his prophecies and visions that he 
exhibited any want of consistency in his statements. 
This had been the point in his public ministry which 
he found it most embarrassing to defend against criti- 
cism and attack, and he had always been inclined to 
indulge in vague and mystical explanations regarding 
it. Now, under the pressure of quivering bodily 
anguish, he expressed himself in terms which were 
vaguer still, and sometimes even contradictory. In- 
deed, the whole matter of his prophetic enlightenment 
rested on a basis so elusive that it is not difficult to 
understand how, in the confusion of brain which the 
torture caused, he should at one moment declare that 
his predictions were revelations direct from God, and at 
another that they were founded on his own opinions 
or on deductions derived from Scripture teaching. 
These contradictions Ser Ceccone did his best to set 
in a glaring light in his distorted version of the 
proceedings. 

When the trial had continued for more than a week, 
the examiners determined to print the report drawn 
up by their notary. The document was read over to 
Savonarola, and by some means or other his signature 
to it was extorted in the presence of six monks from 
his own convent. Before affixing his name, he was 
asked by Ceccone, " Is all that is written here true ? " 
and he made answer, " What / have written is true." 
And then, when the witnesses had duly signed, he 
begged them to take care of the novices and instruct 
them in good doctrine, and also to pray for himself, 
because, he said, the spirit of prophecy had gone from 
him at the moment. 

The report, after being partially read before the 



238 SAVONAROLA 

Signory, was duly published ; but so slender were the 
grounds for conviction which it presented, that the 
authorities issued orders that all copies in circulation 
should be immediately returned to the printer, and 
another version was substituted for it, which proved 
in no wise more satisfactory. With chagrin and 
alarm, the magistrates realised their palpable failure 
to make out a case which would justify them in the 
extreme measures on which they were bent. They 
wrote to the Pope a humble excuse for their failure, 
pleading that they had to do with a man of the most 
extraordinary patience of body and wisdom of soul, 
who hardened himself against torture, involving the 
truth in all kinds of obscurity, with the intention of 
establishing for himself by pretended holiness an 
eternal name among men, or of braving imprisonment 
and death. 

To Savonarola's adherents the publication of the 
report brought a painful shock. They were pro- 
foundly agitated in mind when they learned of what 
purported to be a confession by their revered leader 
of deception in his teaching. Many of the most loyal 
refused to believe in the genuineness of the document 
or in the possibility of such a confession having ever 
been made. Others, who had been thrown into per- 
plexity by the fiasco of the ordeal by fire, too readily 
accepted the confession as a fact, and were yet more 
unsettled in their faith. There were others still who 
flung ofi" all pretence of allegiance, boiling with indig- 
nation at the extent to which, as they thought, they 
had been befooled. 

It was resolved to hold a second trial, which was 
begun on the 21st of April, and from that day to the 



THE BURSTING OF THP: STORM 239 

25th the same process of examination by torture and 
falsification of the depositions was repeated. A por- 
tion of the report was read before the Greater Council 
and an assemVjly of citizens, though not, as the law 
required, in the hearing of Savonarola ; and to account 
for this the reader announced that the Friar had de- 
clined to be present through fear of being stoned — a 
statement which no one really believed. 

This second trial was as obvious a failure as the 
first had been. It was the universal impression that 
the evidence needed to prove a capital offence had not 
yet been obtained. Nor could any charge of flagrant 
guilt be substantiated against Savonarola by the testi- 
mony of his two companions, whose examination had 
meantime been going on. Racked and tortured as Fra 
Domenico was, he remained steadfast in his avowal of 
confidence in his master's goodness, single-mindedness, 
and inspiration as a prophet of God; and although 
told that his master had retracted and owned himself 
a deceiver, he never for a moment wavered. With 
unflinching persistency the simple, brave monk bore 
witness to the innocence and sterling integrity of the 
man whose intimate associate and fellow-worker he 
had been for years. The hysterical Fra Silvestro was 
less resolute. His spirit quailed under the torture, and 
he was ready to utter whatever his tormentors sug- 
gested; yet even his evidence, with all its weak 
vacillations and all its cunning manipulation by Ser 
Ceccone, fell far short of fastening on Savonarola any 
imputation of guilty designs. 

The result of the trials altogether was a disappoint- 
ment to the Signory, who either desired, or felt bound 
by political exigencies to find, a justification for pro- 



240 SAVONAROLA 

ceeding to extremes. So far they had been baffled in 
their purpose; even Ser Ceccone had failed to aid 
them as they hoped, and they dismissed their crafty 
tool with a fraction of the reward he had worked for 
— thirty ducats instead of the four hundred promised 
him. 

Just as his second trial was beginning, an element 
of acute bitterness was thrown into Savonarola's cup 
of anguish, by the defection of his monks at San 
Marco. Those men displayed a lamentable pusil- 
lanimity, and actually took the step of formally dis- 
owning their master. Confounded by the reported 
retractation of his prophetic teaching, and dismayed 
by the painfully trying situation in which they now 
found themselves, — excommunicated, leaderless, ex- 
posed to the full weight of ecclesiastical penalties and 
popular scorn, — they broke down in their allegiance. 
They could no longer acknowledge a master who, 
as they were led to believe, had confessed himself 
a deceiver. Even the valorous, fine-spirited Fra 
Benedetto was for a time utterly unhinged in faith, 
and fled from the scene, although latterly, after a 
period of retirement in the country, he recovered his 
confidence in the great soul that had been his in- 
spirer and guide. On the 21st of April the San 
Marco brethren wrote a letter of abject apology to 
the Pope, deploring the errors into which they had 
been drawn. They had been beguiled, they said, like 
many others, by the Fra Girolamo's commanding 
ability, by his exalted doctrines and holiness of life, 
and by the success of so many of his prophetic 
predictions. But now, having been disillusioned by 
his own avowal of deception, they made their humble 



THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 241 

submission, and besought forgiveness. " Let it suflSce 
your Holiness," they pleaded, " to punish the head and 
source of this offence ; we, like sheep who have gone 
astray, return to the true shepherd." 

Thus in his dire extremity Savonarola's own house- 
hold turned against him. 



16 



CHAPTER XXIV 

The Tragic Close 

A BRIEF respite from molestation followed the conclu- 
sion of the second trial. The Signory, though deter- 
mined to compass the Friar's destruction, were obliged 
to pause for a time by the necessity of coming to terms 
with the Pope, who was again insisting on his demand 
that Savonarola and his companions should be sent to 
Rome for sentence and punishment. In their corre- 
spondence with Alexander vi. the Florentine magis- 
trates urged that the execution should take place at 
Florence, where the offence had been committed, and 
that the Pope should send commissioners to examine 
the prisoners on his own behalf; and they gave it 
plainly to be understood that they had both the mean^ 
and the will to bring about what they knew to be his 
Holiness' desire — the death of the man he feared. On 
this assurance they founded a renewal of their requesit 
for the liberty of taxing ecclesiastical property. The 
Pope finally agreed. A bargain was struck over the 
life of Savonarola. The Signory were to be allowed 
to carry out the sentence against him at Florence, on 
the tacitly implied condition that it was to be a sen- 
tence of doom; and, as an inducement to fulfil the 
engagement, the right to levy a tenth on ecclesiastical 

242 



THE TRAGIC CLOSE 243 

property was granted for a period of three years. 
" Three times ten," was the grimly derisive remark 
of the Piagnoni, "make thirty; Savonarola, like the 
Saviour, is sold for thirty pieces of silver." Two com- 
missioners were to be appointed by the Pope to act in 
his name and to see the case brought to a satisfactory^ 
conclusion. 

Pending the settlement of these negotiations and the 
arrival of the Pope's representatives, Savonarola was 
left nearly a month in quiet in his prison-cell. He 
employed the interval in writing two short expositions, 
one on the 51st, and the other on the 31st Psalm, 
in which, in language saturated with the spirit of 
the. Bible, he gave vent to the deepest emotions of 
his heart in communion with God. The treatise on 
Psalm 51 is exceedingly rich in scriptural quotations, 
and full of passionate yet reverent pleading for higher 
purity, more complete consecration, and firmer faith. 
It throbs, too, with yearning concern for the welfare 
of the Church, that its walls may be built up, and that 
then the Lord may accept the sacrifices of righteous- 
ness. " O Lord, how many sacrifices we offer at this 
day which are not acceptable to Thee, but rather 
abominable ! For we offer the sacrifices not of righte- 
ousness, but of our own ceremonial; therefore are 
they not accepted by Thee. Where is now the glory 
of apostles ? Where the courage of martyrs ? Where 
the fruit of preachers ? Where the holy simplicity of 
monks ? Where the virtues and works of the early 
Christians ? Then wilt Thou accept their sacrifices 
when Thou shalt adorn them with Thy grace and 
virtues. If, moreover, Thou wilt favourably regard 
Sion in Thy good pleasure, then shalt Thou accept the 



244 SAVONAROLA 

sacrifice of righteousness, because the people will begin 
to live well, and to keep Thy commandments and to do 
righteousness, and Thy blessing shall be upon them. 
Then the ofierings of the priests and the clergy will be 
acceptable to Thee, because forsaking earthly things 
they will gird themselves unto a purer life ; and the 
unction of Thy blessing shall be upon their heads. 
Then w^ill the whole burnt-offerings of the religious be 
acceptable to Thee when, forsaking sloth and luke- 
warmness, they shall be perfected in every part by the 
flame of Divine love. . . . Then shall Thy Church 
flourish ; then shall she extend her borders ; then shall 
Thy praise resound from the ends of the earth ; then 
shall joy and gladness fill the world ; then shall the 
saints be joyful in glory, then shall they rejoice in 
their beds, while they wait for Thee in the land of the 
living. Let that then be made now unto me. Lord, I 
beseech Thee, that Thou mayest have mercy on me 
according to Thy great mercy, that Thou mayest accept 
me for a sacrifice of righteousness, for an ofiering of 
holiness, for the whole burnt-ofl'ering of a religious life, 
for the young bullock of Thy Cross, whereby God 
grant that I may deserve to pass from this vale of 
misery to that glory which Thou hast prepared for 
them that love Thee." 

In the exposition of Psalm 31 he speaks of his own 
depression and despair, and tells how hope has come to 
relieve him. " Heaviness hath besieged me, with a 
great and strong host hath hedged me in, she hath 
oppressed my heart with clamours and with weapons, 
day and night she ceaseth not to fight against me. My 
friends are in her camp, and are become mine enemies. 
Whatsoever I see, whatsoever I hear, they bring the 



THE TRAGIC CLOSE 245 

banners of Heaviness. The memory of friends 
saddens me ; the remembrance of my children grieveth 
me ; the thought of cloister and of cell tortures me ; 
when I think upon my own studies, it affects me with 
sadness ; the consideration of my sins weigheth me 
down. For even as to those sick of a fever all sweet 
things seem bitter, even so to me all things seem 
changed to mourning and heaviness. Yerily a great 
weight upon the heart is this. heaviness; the poison of 
asps, a deadly pestilence, murmurs against God, ceases 
not to blaspheme, exhorts to desperation. Unhappy 
that I am, who shall deliver me from her unhallowed 
hands ? If all things which I see and hear follow her 
banners and fight stoutly against me, who shall be my 
protector ? Who shall succour me ? Whither shall I 
go ? How .shall I escape ? I know what to do : I will 
turn me to things unseen, and will lead them forth 
against the things which are seen. And who shall be 
captain of an host so high and so terrible ? Hope, 
which is of things invisible ; Hope, I say, shall come 
against Heaviness and shall put her to rout. Who 
shall be able to stand against Hope ? Hear what the 
prophet saith. Thou, Lord, art my Hope ; Thou hast set 
my place of defence very high. Who shall stand 
against the Lord ? Who shall be able to storm His 
place of refuge which is very high ? I will call her, 
therefore, and she will make haste to come, and will not 
fail me. Lo, she hath come already ; she hath brought 
gladness ; she hath taught me to fight, and hath said 
unto me. Cry aloud, cease not ; and I say. What shall 
I cry ? Say, quoth she, boldly and with all thy heart, 
' In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped ; I shall not be con- 
founded for ever ; in Thy righteousness deliver Thou 



246 SAVONAROLA 

me.' O wondrous power of Hope, whose face Heavi- 
ness could not abide. Already comfort hath come. Now 
let Heaviness cry aloud and assail me with her host ; 
let the world press me hard, let enemies rise against 
me ; I fear nothing, because in Thee, Lord, have I 
hoped." And then he goes on to express his entire 
dependence on heavenly grace in words which Martin 
Luther afterwards claimed as a foreshadowing of his 
own doctrine of Justification by Faith. " I will hope 
in the Lord, even as my Hope hath taught me to hope, 
and I shall soon be delivered from all my troubles. 
By what merits shall I be delivered ? Not mine 
own. Lord, but in Thy righteousness deliver me. In 
Thy righteousness, I say, not my own, for I seek for 
mercy ; I put not forward my own righteousness. 
But if by grace Thou hast rendered me just, then have 
I Thy righteousness already. The Pharisees placed 
confidence in works of righteousness ; they trusted in- 
deed in their own righteousness ; and therefore did 
not submit themselves to the righteousness of God, for 
by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified be- 
fore God. But the righteousness of God hath appeared 
by the grace of Jesus Christ, even without the works 
of the law." 

Thus in his solitary confinement, high up in the 
Palazzo Yecchio tower, above the hum and clamour of 
the busy Piazza, the fervent-souled man, forsaken of 
friends and plotted against by foes, was wrapt in 
lofty contemplation ; and there, in the long and lonely 
hours, with right arm bruised by the tortures he had 
undergone, he struggled, till paper was denied him, to 
pen a record of the thoughts by which he felt his 
heart strengthened and inspired. And the effort was 



THE TRAGIC CLOSE 247 

not in vain. For the two expositions, when soon after- 
wards published, were received with extraordinary 
interest. Their beauty of sentiment, devoutness of 
spirit, and glowing warmth of spiritual emotion, ren- 
dered them welcome to thousands of earnest men and 
women everywhere, who were yearning for some help- 
ful stimulus and nourishment to their religious life. 
Indeed, the eager demand for those last words of 
Savonarola proved that the chord which he had struck 
during his wonderful ministry, though not responding 
so loudly as once it did to his touch, was still really 
vibrating in people's hearts. Within two years after 
his death, twenty-one editions of the short treatises 
were issued, and before the middle of the sixteenth 
century translations were made into English, French, 
German, Spanish, and the vernacular Italian. Even 
the few lines embodying a Rule for Virtuous Living, 
which he wrote on a book-cover at the request of his 
jailer, whose affection he had won, had to be printed 
to meet a widespread desire. 

The lull in the storm was broken on the 19th of 
May, when the commissioners of the Pope made their 
entry into Florence with great circumstance and 
ceremony, and amid the acclamations of a thought- 
less mob, who encouraged them with shouts of " Death 
to the Friar ! " One of those commissioners was Fra 
Giovacchino Tarriano, General of the Dominican 
Order, highly esteemed for his learning and worth, 
and a former friend of Savonarola. The other was 
the Spanish doctor, Francesco Romolino, an official 
at the Roman court, and eventually a cardinal, a 
man of scandalous life, and characterised by all the 
mercilessness of an inquisitor, whose very presence 



248 SAVONAROLA 

in connection with such an affair was itself an omen 
of evil, and a sure guarantee against any failure of 
vigour through the gentleness which his colleague 
might show. In fact, Romolino made no attempt to 
conceal that he had come to condemn Savonarola, 
not to judge him ; and on the very night of his 
arrival in the city he is reported to have said in 
boastful levity, "We shall have a fine bonfire, for I 
have the sentence of condemnation safe in my pocket." 
Next day the trial began, the Papal commissioners 
being assisted by five representatives of the different 
bodies of Florentine officials. Ser Ceccone, despite 
the clumsiness of his former services, was once more 
called in to exercise his manipulating gifts, with 
two other scribes, however, to aid him in his nefarious 
task. This third trial, even ^ore than the others 
that preceded it, was little else than a pretence. 
The result was a foregone conclusion. Savonarola 
was from the first treated as a guilty man, and the 
sole aim of his judges was to compel him to confess 
himself guilty. With regard to his endeavours to 
obtain the calling of a General Council, which was 
the head and front of his offending, he was long 
and severely questioned. Every means was used to 
extract from him information as to his confederates 
in that scheme, which was held to be so fatally 
perilous to the unity of the Church ; but he per- 
sistently declared that he had spoken to none re- 
garding it except the three brothers, Domenico, 
Silvestro, and Niccolo ; that he had not taken counsel 
with any of the princes of Italy nor any of the 
prelates or cardinals on the subject ; and that his 
hopes were placed on the King of France, the Em- 



THE TRAGIC CLOSE 249 

peror, the King of Spain, and the King of England. 
He was asked whether he had drawn from Era 
Domenico or Era Silvestro the secrets revealed to 
them in the confessional, and to this he stoutly and 
repeatedly answered that he had never done any 
such thing. Then Romolino, who appears to have 
assumed the leading part in the examination, ordered 
him to be stripped for the rope, and told him to 
speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
the truth. The prospect of the terrible agony sent 
a spasm of terror through his shattered, sensitive 
frame. He flung himself on his knees, and exclaimed, 
" Magistrates of _ Elorence, bear me witness that I 
have denied my light from fear of torture ; if I 
must suffer I will suffer for the truth ; that which 
I have said I hav^ had from God. O God, grant 
that I may repent of having denied Thee for fear 
of torture. I deserve it." Then he was stripped. 
In vain he showed his left arm, all wrenched and 
powerless — there was neither ruth nor pity to be 
looked for now. When drawn up by the pulley, he 
became delirious. " O Jesus, help me ; this time Thou 
hast caught me," he cried ; and on being asked, as 
he hung, why he said this, he replied, " That I might 
be thought a good man. Tear me no more. I will 
tell the truth, for sure, for sure." After being let 
down, he made the pathetic acknowledgment, " When 
I see the instruments of torture I lose myself ; when 
I am in a room with a few men who deal peaceably 
with me I can express myself better." 

The next day there was another examination, and 
the torture was renewed, the main object being to 
v/ring out of him more particulars as to the affair 



2 50 SAVONAROLA 

of the General Council, and specially to discover 
whether his old friend Cardinal CarafFa of Naples 
had been implicated in the design. At one point, 
amid the frenzy of his sufferings, he seemed to con- 
fess the Cardinal's cognisance of the affair. " Naples ! 
Naples ! " he exclaimed, " I consulted also with him ; " 
but when relieved from the racking torment, again 
he protested explicitly that the responsibility rested 
entirely on himself, and that neither the Cardinal 
nor any other was concerned in the scheme. 

Seeing at last that nothing further of real im- 
portance could be extracted either by threats or 
tortures, Romolino dismissed him with the command 
to appear on the morrow to receive his sentence. 
" I am a prisoner," Savonarola replied, " I will come 
if my jailer bring me." 

On the 22nd of May the fate of Savonarola and 
his companions was decided. The question had been 
discussed in a meeting of officials, where one man, 
Agnolo Niccolini, was found honest enough to bear 
testimony to the Friar's learning, worth of character, 
and high moral influence, and generous enough to 
plead for the preservation of his life at least, that, 
though imprisoned, he might benefit the world by 
his writings. But this witness had no support from 
his colleagues. Savonarola alive, they retorted, would 
be a danger to the public peace. " A dead enemy 
makes no more war." The judges and commissioners 
had their consultation also, and they resolved on 
passing a sentence of death. That such a sentence 
had been deliberately contemplated from the outset 
is only too clear from the whole course of procedure ; 
and the main object of the three successive trials 



THE TRAGIC CLOSE 251 

had been to obtain a sufficiently ostensible warrant 
for pronouncing it. That warrant, it was held, had 
been found in Savonarola's crime in risking a dis- 
astrous schism in the Church and consequent disorder 
in society by his General Council scheme; in his 
disobedience to the authority of the Pope by setting 
at nought the decree of excommunication ; and in 
the political and civil discords which his interference 
in public affairs was alleged to have caused. In the 
excited condition of feeling at the time, and with 
a party in power implacably bent on getting a dreaded 
obstacle to their influence out of the way, those 
grounds sufficed as a colourable pretext for the Friar's 
condemnation. No allowance was made for the 
strong reasons which had moved Savonarola to act 
as he did — the wholesale bribery and notoriously 
immoral life of Alexander vi., by persisting in which 
he forfeited his right to dictate in the sphere of 
morals and religion. The Pope's jurisdiction, it was 
maintained, was not for a moment to be questioned, 
however unworthy his personal character might be ; 
and for such an attitude of opposition as Savonarola 
had presumed to take, death was the punishment 
inevitably due. The Signory in office endorsed the 
decision, as being in harmony with their views. 

The two other friars were included in the same con- 
demnation. Romolino, indeed, suggested that the life 
of Fra Domenico should be spared, as he was somewhat 
doubtful as to the prudence of executing a man who 
was still in great favour with a large section of 
the citizens. Fra Domenico, he was immediately 
told, would keep alive the doctrines of Fra Girolamo. 
" Ah, well," he responded, '' a wretched friar more 



252 SAVONAROLA 

or less makes little difference ; put him to death, 
then." 

The sentence was at once published in the city, and 
duly announced to the three condemned men that even- 
ing. Fra Silvestro was completely overwhelmed by 
the intelligence. He had neither the courage of the 
martyr nor the resignation of the saint. Fra Domenico, 
with his warm, loyal heart, was filled with joy at the 
thought of sharing the same fate as his master, and on 
being told, in answer to his inquiry as to the manner 
of death to be adopted, that he and the others were to 
be hanged first and then burnt, he pleaded that he 
might be burnt alive, and thereby give fuller proof of 
his devotion. Savonarola was on his knees in prayer 
when the messenger entered. He received the news of 
his sentence with calm resignation. The worst bitter- 
ness had passed ; he had gone through his Gethsemane 
in some of the solitary hours he had first spent in that 
narrow prison-cell, when the sting of rejection and 
of apparently bafiied endeavour pierced his soul, and 
he had faced in thouo^ht the awful crisis which he saw 
approaching ; and so, having already drunk the keenest 
drop in the cup of his agony, when informed that he 
must be prepared to die on the following morning, 
he offered no remark, but quietlj^ resumed his broken 
prayer. 

Soon he was joined in his lonely vigil by a good man, 
Jacopo Niccolini, a member of the Battuti brotherhood, 
whose self-imposed task it was to attend and comfort 
the doomed in their last hours. With face veiled, and 
robed in black from head to foot, he came to minister 
consolation to a brother-man in his adversity. " I do 
not come," he said, " to urge resignation on one who has 



THE TRAGIC CLOSE 253 

converted a whole people to virtue." " Do your duty," 
was Savonarola's simple reply. He had only one re- 
quest to make, and thett was, that his kindly visitor 
should procure for him the favour of a brief interview 
with his two brethren before death. Niccolini set out 
on his errand, and after some difficulty gained the 
Signory's consent. It was arranged that the interview 
should take place in the hall of the Greater Council, — 
the magnificent chamber which had been erected as an 
addition to the Palazzo Vecchio through the patriotic 
efforts of Savonarola in the great days of his popularity 
and power ; and under its spacious roof, amid the gloom 
of falling night, the three friars met again after six 
weeks of separation, during which they had undergone 
an experience of weary imprisonment and excruciating 
torture that had twisted their limbs, sapped their 
strength, and rent their hearts with sorrow. Both 
Fra Domenico and Fra Silvestro had been made aware 
of the master's supposed confession, but once more in 
his presence, and looking on his worn but serene face, 
they felt the old spell of his commanding soul, and all 
doubt vanished from their minds. Gently he reproved 
Fra Domenico for his desire to be burnt alive. " It is 
not given to any one," he said, " to choose the manner 
of his own death, but it is our duty only to take with 
joy the death which God may provide for us. Who 
knows if thou couldst undergo the death thou desirest, 
which depends not upon our strength, but the grace of 
God ? man should never tempt God." To Fra Silvestro 
he turned with a few words of grave yet kindly warn- 
ing. He knew that this brother intended to speak to 
the people and declare his innocence from the scaffold, 
and he enjoined him to abandon the idea. " Thou 



2 54 SAVONAROLA 

shouldst keep thy peace like Christ, who, though in- 
nocent, yet would not declare His innocence even on 
the Cross." In reverent silence the two men listened 
to the admonitions thus addressed to them, and then, 
humbly kneeling at Savonarola's feet, they received 
his benediction, and were led away to their separate 
cells. In his own cell in the tower Savonarola had the 
company of the friendly Niccolini all through the 
hours of that last night on earth. Having declined 
the offer of food, lest the clearness of his mind should 
be disturbed, he was soon overcome by exhaustion, and 
was fain to ask Niccolini to allow him to rest his head 
on his knee. Thus pillowed, lying down on the floor, 
he fell asleep, and in his sleep his countenance became 
serene and smiling like a child's, and he seemed to his 
wondering companion as already enjoying a glimpse of 
the eternal blessedness. Awaking at last, he was full 
of thankfulness to his gentle and patient comforter, 
and opened his mind to him regarding the troubles 
which he believed to be in store for Florence, troubles 
which, according to the rather doubtful statement of 
Burlamacchi, he predicted would come to pass when 
there should be a Pope called Clement ruling at 
Rome. 

When morning broke, Savonarola and the two con- 
demned brothers were permitted to meet once more in 
the sombre little chapel, with its few contracted win- 
dows and simple furnishings, on the third floor of the 
Palazzo. There, while the crowd was already begin"- 
ning to gather in the broad Piazza outside, and the 
preparations for the execution were going on, those 
three men celebrated their last Sacrament together, 
and in the most sacred rites of religion nerved their 



THE TRAGIC CLOSE 255 

souls for the fate which was now immediately at hand. 
The finest qualities of Savonarola's spirit shone forth 
in that solemn hour. Raising the consecrated Host, 
he broke out into fervent prayer, making confession of 
the genuine faith of his heart. " Lord, I know that 
Thou art that very God, the Creator of the world and 
of human nature. I know that Thou art that perfect, 
indivisible, and inseparable Trinity, distinct in three 
Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I know that 
Thou art that Eternal Word, who didst descend from 
heaven to earth in the womb of the Virgin Mary. 
Thou didst ascend the wood of the Cross to shed Thy 
precious Blood for us, miserable sinners. I pray Thee, 
my Lord ; I pray Thee, my Salvation; I pray Thee, 
my Consoler ; that such precious Blood be not shed for 
me in vain, but may be for the remission of all my 
sins. For these I crave Thy pardon, from the day that 
I received the water of Holy Baptism even to this 
moment ; and I confess to Thee, Lord, my guilt. And 
so I crave pardon of Thee for what offences I have 
done to this city and all this people, in things spiritual 
and temporal, as well as for all those things wherein 
of myself I am not conscious of having erred. And 
humbly do I crave pardon of all those persons who are 
here standing round. May they pray to God for me, 
and may He make me strong up to the last end, so 
that the enemy may have no power over me. Amen." 
Then he and his companions took the Holy Communion ; 
and they were still devoutly kneeling in silent medita- 
tion when the guards came to lead them out to their 
doom. As they descended the stairs to the scene of exe- 
cution, Savonarola spoke a few words of encouragement 
to Fra Silvestro : " We shall soon be there where we 



256 SAVONAROLA 

can sing with David, ' Behold how good and pleasant 
it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.' " 

A mighty concourse was waiting in the Piazza della 
Signoria, trembling with eagerness, yet for the most 
part awed and subdued. The citizens of Florence 
could not quite forget what the chief victim, whose 
death they had come to witness, had been. Many of 
them had chafed under his rigid moral restrictions ; 
many were opposed to him politically ; many were de- 
termined to break his power ; but there were thousands 
whose hearts had been cheered and strengthened by 
his teaching, who had found an inspiration for their 
lives in his holy zeal, and who, though staggered and 
perplexed by his failure to substantiate his prophetic 
mission in the way they expected, were conscious of a 
mysterious sense of his greatness still haunting their 
thoughts. Many besides were there whose loyalty and 
faith had never faltered, and who cherished a secret 
hope that some sign might yet be given to attest their 
revered leader as the messenger of God. 

Again, as in the arrangements for the ordeal by fire, 
a long narrow platform stretched out from the corner 
of the Palazzo Yecchio for some distance across the 
square. In this case, however, the platform ended in 
a circular area on which a pile of fuel was heaped, and 
above this rose the gibbet, with its three halters and 
three chains — the latter to hold the bodies suspended 
after the fuel had been fired. The gibbet, an upright 
beam with projecting arms, looked so like a cross, that 
the adherents of Savonarola were heard loudly mur- 
muring, " They are going to crucify him like his 
Master ; " and one arm had to be cut short to destroy 
the comparison. 



THE TRAGIC CLOSE 257 

Three tribunals had been erected on the Palace bal- 
cony, between the doorway and the platform — one for 
the presiding bishop, another for the Papal commis- 
sioners, and a third for the Gonfaloniere and the Eight, 
whose function it was to give the final order for 
death. 

When the three condemned friars, on coming down 
from the chapel, reached the Palace steps, they were 
met by a Dominican of Santa Maria Novella, who 
commanded them to be stripped of their monastic 
robes ; and so they emerged into view wearing only 
their woollen tunics, with feet bare and hands bound 
behind. They were then taken before the first tribunal, 
where the Bishop of Vasona, an old disciple of Savon- 
arola, sat in charge, painfully ill at ease in fulfilling the 
duty laid upon him. There they were again clad in 
their religious vestments, and again stripped in token 
of their formal degradation. While this ceremony was 
being performed, the Bishop took Savonarola by the 
arm, and in the confusion of the moment stammered 
out, " I separate thee from the Church militant — and 
triumphant." " Militant," rejoined Savonarola in cor- 
rection ; " not triumphant ; that is not in your power." 
" Amen," said the Bishop, " may God lead you there." 
Then, in their bare woollen tunics once more, they 
passed to the next tribunal, where the Pope's commis- 
sioners read out their sentence, which condemned them 
as " heretics, schismatics, and despisers of the Holy 
See," and ordered them to be delivered over to the 
secular arm. When the reading was finished, Romolino 
added, " His Holiness is pleased to free you from the 
pains of purgatory by granting you a plenary indul- 
gence. Do you accept it ? " They bowed their heads 
17 



258 SAVONAROLA 

in sign of assent. At the third tribunal, where the 
civil authorities sat, they heard their sentence con- 
firmed, and the death-penalty formally decreed — that 
they should be hanged and then burnt, " so that their 
souls should be entirely separated from their bodies." 

Thus, disrobed, degraded, doomed to death, they 
moved onwards to the scaffold, at first in silent prayer, 
and then reciting the Te Deiim in an undertone together. 
As they passed along the roughly-constructed platform, 
their naked feet were pierced by sharp stakes thrust 
through the gaps between the planks by loose youths 
among the crowd. All round, in the space nearest to 
the platform, a wild rabble had collected, drawn from 
the worst elements of the population, and their spiteful 
insults, curses, and jeers formed a rude contrast to the 
subdued demeanour of the multitude that filled the 
square. Amid all the mockery and violence, however,^ 
expressions of sympathy were not wanting. Some one 
held out food and pressed it on Savonarola to strengthen 
him, but he merely replied, " Why do you offer me 
these things, since I am now to depart this life ? " 
Another tried to comfort him by referring to the good 
works he had done. " God only," he said, " can console 
men in their last hour." A friendly priest near by 
asked him, " With what spirit do you bear this 
martyrdom ? " " My Saviour," was his answer, " will- 
ingly died for me, and should not I willingly give up 
this poor body out of love to Him ? " 

At the foot of the scaffold they all kneeled, each one 
before his crucifix. Fra Silvestro was the first called 
on to suffer. He mounted the steps firmly, for strength 
had come to him at last, and with the words, " Lord, 
into Thy hands I commend my spirit," he gave his neck 



THE TRAGIC CLOSE 259 

to the halter. Fra Domenico followed, and with beam- 
ing face went to his death as to a festival. Last of all 
came Savonarola, who had remained kneeling in pro- 
found thought while the execution of his companions 
was going on. Calm, resolute, with faith strong in 
God and in the work which God had given him to do, 
he mounted the scaffold, and for a moment cast his 
eyes round, and looked the multitude in the face.. 
Often had he appealed to those people and stirred their 
hearts by his eloquence and power ; but all thought of 
appealing to them was abandoned now. Sorrowing for 
Florence, he was utterly resigned as to his own fate. 
In that last glance he saw the vast throng awed into 
silence, the flash of thousands of eyes intent on wit- 
nessing his death, and, immediately beneath, the glare 
of torches burning, ready to fire the fuel in which his_ 
body would be consumed. Yet there was no word of 
remonstrance ; he stood there to meet his end at peace 
with himself, and in perfect charity with all men. 
Amid the hush of suspense which fell as the halter was 
thrown over his neck and he was swung into the air, 
one harsh voice broke in with the derisive shout, 
" Now, prophet, is the time to work a miracle." And, 
indeed, the expectation of a supernatural wonder was 
still present in many minds. 

As soon as life was extinct the pile of faggots was 
lighted, but a gust of wind blew the flames aside, and 
for some little while it seemed as if the vaguely looked- 
f or prodigy had appeared. " A miracle, a miracle ! " 
was the cry of many in their excitement, as they drew 
back startled at the sight. The wind ceased, and the 
flames leaped up and enveloped the suspended bodies 
The cords which bound Savonarola's arms were soon 



26o SAVONAROLA 

consumed, and the scorching heat caused his right hand 
to make a convulsive movement which arrested atten- 
tion. He was raising it, said his faithful followers, in 
the act of blessing the people who had cruelly hastened 
his end. 

Thus, at ten o'clock in the morning of 23rd May 
1498, died the great preacher of Florence, who had 
held a commanding place in the mind of his generation 
as a saint of exceptional purity, a devoted moral and 
religious reformer, a powerful political leader, a daring 
and independent thinker, a prophetic messenger of the 
Almighty. He was just in the middle period of his 
manhood — forty-five years of age. High as his aims 
were, and disinterested as were his motives, he had 
attempted a task which drew upon him opposition 
from many quarters and in many forms, and he fell a 
victim to the hostility he had raised. His ashes were 
flung into the Arno. Yile calumnies were heaped on 
his name ; his foes congratulated one another on his 
destruction. Yet the men and women who believed in 
him still — and they were much more numerous than 
on the surface appeared — cherished his memory and 
clung to his teaching with pious reverence. They 
gathered every relic of him they could possibly find ; 
they came often to pray at the spot where he perished ; 
they deposited flowers there every year on. the anni- 
versary of his death ; and the practice was taken up by 
devout souls in succeeding generations, and continued 
unbroken for two centuries or more. His books were 
eagerly read ; the details of his life were industriously 
collected; and ardent disciples found a pious joy in 
giving a record of his career and work to the world. 



CHAPTER XXV 

Review 

As in the case of many a distinguished man called to 
perform a difficult work in difficult times, and failing 
to carry the objects he aimed at to full visible success, 
the reputation of Savonarola has suffered from the 
shadow cast upon it by his failure. His real greatness 
has been obscured, not so much by the melancholy 
tragedy of his death, as by the troubles and animos- 
ities which beset him in his later days, and which to 
a lamentable degree cramped his usefulness and power. 
Those fatal embarrassments were due to several causes, 
which, though already touched upon in the course of 
the narrative, may appropriately be summed up here. 

1. He accepted a position which was too complicated 
to maintain. In the attempt he made to combine the 
rdle of political director with that of religious teacher 
and reformer, he undertook a task which, by very 
necessity, involved him in meshes of perplexing 
entanglement. The exigencies of the times were such 
that in his political action he was forced to identify 
himself with a particular party in the State, and, as a 
consequence, the interests of his religious work were 
mixed up with that party's rising or falling fortunes. 
It was not in the nature of things that he should 

261 



262 SAVONAROLA 

continue for long to control the government of the 
State from the pulpit without incurring for his 
doctrines, his reforming efforts, and his own person, 
the full brunt of partisan enmity and intrigue. The 
service he rendered to Florence in framing its consti- 
tution after the expulsion of the Medici, was invaluable. 
It was a service thrust upon him by a pressure of circum- 
stances which it was impossible for him to withstand ; 
he was the only man of any influence in Florence who 
had a well-defined, enlightened, practicable form of 
government to propose, and his success in securing its 
adoption was flattering in the highest degree. Un- 
fortunately, however, having once been drawn so 
prominently into the sphere of politics, he could not 
restrain himself from endeavouring more or less to 
regulate the actual working of the political machinery 
he had organised. This was one of the rocks on which 
the lofty usefulness of his career was split. A factious 
opposition was aroused, which, increasing always in 
bitterness and vehemence, broke down his sway as a 
religious teacher, and contributed to his destruction 
when the fitting opportunity arrived. Moreover, the 
difficulties thus occasioned were aggravated by the 
collision into which his political action brought him 
with the Pope, whose implacable resentment he incurred 
by standing between him and his favourite policy of 
drawing Florence into the Holy League. 

2. He imposed a restraint which inevitably provoked 
revolt. Well-meant and laudable as most of his regu- 
lations for the reform of manners were, Savonarola 
committed the mistake of enforcing their observance 
by measures of undue severity. Prince Schwartzenberg 
was right when he said, " You can do anything with 



REVIEW 263 

bayonets except sit on them." That was a terse, 
picturesque statement of the truth that the enforce- 
ment of rigid rules by means correspondingly rigid is 
a perilous experiment. On that experiment Savonarola 
ventured, and the hostility which latterly crippled his 
work and compassed his downfall was largely owing 
to the rebellious feeling stirred up thereby. 

3. He assumed a prerogative which it was hazard- 
ous to exercise. By the claim to direct supernatural 
illumination which he asserted so persistently, though 
with sincere enough intent, Savonarola fostered a 
strong delusion in the popular mind ; and when that 
delusion was shattered by the disappointment in con- 
nection with the ordeal by fire, he lost a powerful body 
of support, and was left helplessly exposed to the 
political and ecclesiastical enmities that were conspiring 
to ruin him. 

In brief, Savonarola's action in politics drew upon 
him the rancour of opposing factions in the Republic 
and of the Pope at Rome. The ascetic rigour of his 
reforms kindled resentments, deep and fierce. His 
honest but mistaken zeal in insisting on his prophetic 
and supernatural gifts excited expectations which he 
could not possibly fulfil, and which, when baffled, 
created an irritation fatally damaging to his influence 
and prestige. 

Such were the circumstances which have cast a 
shadow over the real greatness of Savonarola. Never 
theless, the greatness was there, and had been un- 
mistakably proved — the splendid intellectual capacity, 
the firm grasp of knowledge, penetrating insight, wide 
sweep of thought, lofty devotion of soul, bold and 
powerful personality. And the force of his exalted 



264 SAVONAROLA 

endowments was heightened by the passionate earnest- 
ness of his nature, his unfaltering faith in the eternal 
majesty of righteousness, the high moral aims by which 
he was fired. Though foiled, by the confusions of a 
corrupt transitional age, in accomplishing all the ends 
for which he strove, and though struck down by the 
very opposition which his high-purposed efforts had 
awakened, such a man was bound to exert an influence 
of no ordinary character on the mind and life of the 
world. The moral enthusiasm he infused into the 
nobler spirits of his time lived on after him. He 
turned men's thoughts to the great living problems of 
existence ; and in numberless cases where his opinions 
were disowned and his peculiar work slighted, the 
mental incentive received from his preaching and 
writings impelled men to pursue the track of inquiry 
in the new direction to which his venturesome genius 
had pointed. To a great extent he rescued the New 
Learning in Florence and throughout Italy from the 
barren and frivolous uses to which it was being applied, 
and he did it by the conception, which was always 
prominent in his teaching, of the vital relation which 
all learning has to the larger and more stirring interests 
of life. Thus the work which the Humanists of the 
Kenaissance were doing in quickening the free activity 
of the spirit of man, Savonarola lifted to a region 
calculated to aflbrd results more directly beneficial to 
the progress and elevation of humanity. Again, the 
testimony which by word and example he bore for the 
freedom of the human soul against political despotism 
on the one hand, and unbending ecclesiastical officialism 
on the other, had effects which lasted far beyond the 
term of his own brief career. Though himself finally 



REVIEW 265 

crushed; a martyr to the work which he felt laid upon 
him by the will of the Almighty, he broke open a path 
by which others could advance and the world move 
forward to a better day. Society was waking up, but 
was restless, uncertain, easily misled ; he gave voice to 
the vague aspirations of his time, fed and strengthened 
all that was best in them, put them into definite form, 
and revealed the lines along which the struggle should 
be made if their realisation was ever to be reached. 

A particularly important factor in Savonarola's in- 
fluence as an epoch-maker was the fresh, arresting 
light he threw on the essential value for the good of 
the world of practical Christian morality. This, in fact, 
was his supreme idea, which he held up and flashed 
on men's minds in every sermon, book, or pamphlet, 
whether he dealt with religious, political, or social 
themes. It was in the interests of Christian morality 
that he prized his position as the chief preacher in 
Florence, and that he was induced to enter the arena 
of political aflairs. And his enthusiasm for this object 
it was which inspired his dream of converting Florence 
into a theocracy. Many of his reforming measures, as 
has been seen, collapsed. In the impetuousness of 
his zeal he fell into mistakes as to the methods and 
means by which the end he sought could be attained. 
But the great idea itself — the idea of practical 
righteousness, justice, purity, and good-doing, as the 
fundamental conditions of well-being in the Church 
and the State, in social and private life — was so 
strikingly presented and pressed, that it laid hold of 
men's inmost convictions, and gave to the moral sense 
of that generation a stimulus which was passed on, to 
stir to higher moral life the generations following. 



266 SAVONAROLA 

Perhaps, after all, Savonarola's most distinctive con- 
tribution to the progress of the v^^orld was the moral 
passion he inspired — the feeling he awakened in a 
sordid, pagan age of the great ends of life, of the 
needs and claims of man's immortal nature, of the 
glory of truth and the noble endeavour for right. 
That passion was in himself ; it throbbed through the 
sermons he preached, and through the writings he left 
behind him. And it freshened men's thinking; it 
quickened the pulse of their whole mental being ; it 
forced on them a new standard of judgment ; it fired 
them with visions of higher stages of good for 
humanity, and nerved them to strain forward to the 
untold possibilities of the future. 

Thus Savonarola stood at the dawn of a new era, 
and roused men's minds to move on and grasp its 
larger interests, and share its freer and more vivid 
activities. So far, no doubt, he was still clogged by 
the trammels of mediseval tradition, mediaeval asceti- 
cisms and superstitions, mediaeval scholasticism and 
pedantry, mediaeval conceptions of the supernatural. 
Yet he was alive and awake with a new spirit of 
enterprise, panting to strike out on bolder, freer lines 
of thought, and to find fresh paths of effort for the 
highest human energies. He was like one of those 
figures to be seen in old pictures of the Resurrection 
at the Last Judgment — half-risen and erect, with 
eyes eagerly turned, and arms uplifted, towards the 
new light of life, but with feet still bound and clasped 
in the encumbering earth, and not yet perfectly free. 
Hampered though he was by the crude ideas and 
habits amid which he had grown up, Savonarola in 
certain outstanding points was in advance of his age. 



REVIEW 267 

In his determined testimony on behalf of the inde- 
pendence of the human conscience, in his assertion 
of every man's right to question all authority not 
based on justice and rectitude, and in his insistence on 
the Christian moral Ideal as the supreme rule in all 
departments of private and public life, he took up a 
position which was novel and unfamiliar to the men 
of that day. And he had to suffer the penalties of 
originality, penalties that came upon him with quicker 
stroke and heavier force by reason of his very courage 
and sincerity. Had he been less daring or less 
honest, more inclined to trim and temporise, he might 
have escaped many of the troubles which combined so 
tragically to end his career. Had he been less im- 
patient to see his ideas and the new order he looked 
for established in actual fact, he might have avoided 
the most fatal of the mistakes into which he was 
betrayed. But the moral strenuousness of his temper 
could not be repressed ; it urged him on, regardless of 
all prudential cautions. And when the storm burst on 
him and wrought his death, it was his own intrepid, 
uncompromising loyalty to the high purpose of his 
life, and to what he believed to be the cause of 
human progress, that brought it down in such 
overwhelming fury. For, in George Eliot's words, 
" power rose against him not because of his sins, but 
because of his greatness — not because he sought to 
deceive the world, but because he sought to make it 
noble." 

It would be vain to conceal or minimise his limita- 
tions and his errors ; and there is no need to make the 
attempt in order to establish his claim to generous 
recognition. The place he filled in the life of his 



268 SAVONAROLA 

generation, the breath of fresh vitality he introduced 
into human thought, and the invigorating impetus he 
gave to the best human aspirations ; his progressive 
spirit, and the higher conceptions of well-being to 
which he struggled unswervingly to lead society 
forward — all these features of his life and work, 
combined with the masterful force and devoted fer- 
vour of his own mind, entitle Fra Girolamo Savonarola 
to be ranked among the world's great epoch-making 
men. 



INDEX 



Albeeti, Piero degli, 234. 

Alexander vi., Pope, his election 
and character, 63, 64, 134; scan- 
dalous doings of his family and 
Court, 162 ; excommunication of 
Savonarola, 169-171 ; grief over 
the murder of his son, 176, 177 ; 
threatens Florence with an Inter- 
dict, 196, 201 ; his gratification 
at Savonarola's imprisonment, 
232, 233 ; sends commissioners to 
the trial of Savonarola, 247. 

Angelico, Fra, 28, 29. 

Antonino, first Prior of San Marco, 
29. 

Apocalypse, Savonarola lectures on, 
43, 44. 

Apology for the Congregation of San 
Marco, 152. 

Aquinas, Thomas, Savonarola's 
study of his writings, 12, 13, 24. 

Aristotle, his hold on the schools of 
the Middle Ages, 12. 

Arrabbiati, 126, 147, 166. 

Art in Florence, 33 ; Savonarola's 
attitude towards, 159, 160. 

Bargello, the, 180, 234. 

Benedetto, Fra, 226, 228, 240. 

Benevieni, Girolamo, 158. 

Bentivoglio, Giovanni, his wife 
interrupts Savonarola's sermons 
and threatens his life, 66-68. 

Bianchi, the "Whites," 126. 

Biblioteca Laurenziana, 159. 

Bigi, the "Greys," 126. 



at, 21-25 ; his preaching at a 

later visit, 66-68. 
Bonsi, Domenico, 55. 
Borgia, Piero, Duke of Gandia, 

murder of, 176, 177. 
Borgia, Roderigo, elected Pope. See 

Alexander vi. 
Bracci, Ser Alessandro, 164. 
Brescia, 39, 40. 
Briefs, Papal, with reference to 

Savonarola, 135, 136, 137, 139, 

152, 169, 197, 201. 

Calvin, his experiment compared 
with Savonarola's, 121. 

Cambi, Giovanni, 179. 

" Canti Carnascialeschi, " 34. 

Capponi, Piero, 82, 83 ; defies 
Charles VIII., 92 ; death, 150. 

Caraffa, Cardinal, of Naples, 70, 
142, 152, 164, 250. 

Cardinal's hat, offer of, to Savon- 
arola, 148, 149. 

Careggi, scene of Lorenzo de Medici's 
death, 58. 

Carnival, Savonarola's efforts to 
reform, 141, 142, 156. 

Ceccone, Ser, the notary engnged 
for Savonarola's trial, 236, 240, 
248. 

Charles viii. of France, his de- 
signs on Naples, 78 ; enters Italy, 
80 ; interviews with Savonarola, 
87, 88, 93, 94, 130, 131 ; occupies 
Florence, 90-94 : his death, 233. 



270 



INDEX 



Commissioners, Papal, appointed 
to try Savonarola, 243, 247. 

Compagnacci, the " Evil Com- 
panions," 126, 155, 168. 

Com2)endiu7n Eevelationum, 115, 
117, 225. 

"Conclusions" of Fra Domenico, 
210. 

Congregation, separation of Tuscan 
from Lombard, 69, 70. 

Constitution of Florence remodelled, 
102-107. 

Council of the Church, General, 
Savonarola's eft'orts to secure, 
205-207. 

Council, Great, instituted at Flor- 
ence, 102, 103. 

"Cyrus," the new, from beyond 
the Alps, 75. 

Devotional writings of Savon- 
arola, 73, 184. 

Dialogo delta Verita Profetica, 
117. 

Domenico da Pescia. Fra, 137, 141, 
155 ; accepts the challenge to 
the ordeal by fire, 207, 217, 231; 
execution, 259. 

Dominicans, a preaching order, 26 ; 
last injunctions of their founder, 
71. 

Donatello's "Judith and Holo- 
fernes," 108. 

Duomo of Florence, scene of Savon- 
arola's pulpit triumphs, 45, 101, 
102, 105, 106, 109-112. 

Education, Savonarola's interest 
in, 118. 

Epistle against the Surreptitioios Ex- 
communication, 172, 173. 

Este family, 10, 11. 

Excommunication of Savonarola, 
169-171 ; discussions as to its 
validity, 172, 173. 

Execution of Bernardo del Nero and 
his fellow-conspirators, 180 ; of 
Savonarola and his two brother- 
monks, 258-260. 



Ferrara, 11 ; Savonarola's early 
preaching effort, 26. 

Ficino, Marsilio, 31, 158, 

Florence, 28 ; its appearance, people, 
and industries, 29 ; its condition 
under Medici rule, 30-33 ; art- 
istic and literary activity com- 
bined with moral degeneracy, 33 ; 
expulsion of the Medici, 86 ; visit 
of the French, 90-94 ; re- 
establishment of Republican 
constitution, 95-107 ; pestilence 
and famine, 149 ; unsuccessful 
attempt of Piero de Medici to 
return, 165, 166 ; visited by the- 
plague, 175 ; trial of the Medicean 
conspirators, 179-182 ; threat- 
ened with a Papal Interdict, 196 ; 
arrival of Pope's commissioners, 
247 ; the death scene of Savon- 
arola, 256-260. 

Francesco di Puglia, Fra, challenges 
Savonarola to the ordeal by fire, 
209, 210. 

Francis of Assisi, his youth con- 
trasted with Savonarola's, 13. 

French alliance with Florence, 93. 

French in Florence, 90-94. 

Gandia, Duke of, 176, 177. 
Gerson's views on submission to 

ecclesiastical authority, 173. 
Guilds of Youth, formed under 

Savonarola, 141, 142. 

Holy League, 130, 148, 153. 
Humanists, 3, 4, 264. 

Innocent VIIL, Pope, 38. 

Interdict, Papal, on Florence threat- 
ened, 196, 197. 

Italy, Renaissance in, 2-8, 50, 51 ; 
its princes great patrons of learn- 
ing and art, 2 ; their despotism 
and luxury, 5, 75 ; invaded by 
Charles viii., 80, 81 ; jealousies 
among its States, 81. 

"Lazarus, come forth," 163, 205. 
Letters of Savonarola, to his father, 



INDEX 



271 



19, 20 ; to his mother, 40, 41 ; 
to Fra Dornenico, 52, 53 ; to 
Pope Alexander, 136, 137, 138, 
170 ; on death of Pope's son, 177, 
178 ; last remonstrance, 203, 204. 

Library, Medicean, rescued by 
Savonarola, 159. 

Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, 78, 
135, 149, 151, 207. 

Luther's view of Savonarola's doc- 
trine as foreshadowing his own, 
246. 

Macchiavelli, 97, 107. 

Malatesta Sacromoro, Fra, offers 
himself for the ordeal by fire, 211 ; 
plays the traitor, 230, 232. 

Mariano da Gennazzano, Fra, a 
rival preacher, 35, 56, 57, 169, 
197. 

Mary Tudor and Calais, 76. 

Mazzinghi, Domenico, 207. 

Medici, Cosimo de, 28, 30. 

Medici, Giuliano de, murder of, 32. 

Medici, Lorenzo de, 30 ; his patron- 
age of culture and art, 31 ; the 
Pazzi conspiracy against his life, 
32 ; his strangely mixed character 
and pursuits, 34 ; attitude to- 
wards Savonarola, 53-60 ; his 
death, 60. 

Medici, Piero de, appearance and 
character, 61, 62 ; surrenders to 
Charles viii., 84 ; expulsion from 
Florence, 86 ; attempt to return, 
195, 196. 

Medici palace ransacked, 94. 

Meditations, Savonarola's, on 
Psalms 51st and 31st, 243-247. 

Michael Angelo, 31 ; his interest in 
Savonarola, 160. 

Miraudola, Pico della, 31 ; his 
learning and gifts, 36, 37; secures 
return of Savonarola to Florence, 
42 ; his sympathy with Savon- 
arola's work, 84. 

Monte di Pieta, its objects, 118 ; 
inauguration of, 146. 

Morgante Maggiore, Pulci's, 31. 

Mysticism, Savonarola's, 47-49. 



Neeo, Bernardo del, 165 ; execution 
on charge of treason, 179. 

Niccolini, Agnolo, 250. 

Niccolini, Jacopo, 252-254. 

Niccolo d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, 10. 

Noah's Ark, sermons on, 76, 77, 
80, 81. 

Oedeal by fire, 208-223. 

Pageants and spectacles provided 
by Italian princes, 5, 11. 

Palazzo Vecchio, Savonarola 
preaches in, 52, 101 ; its Great 
Hall, 149, 253 ; Savonarola im- 
prisoned in tower, 232 ; his last 
Sacrament in chapel, 254, 255. 

" Palle, Palle ! " rallying cry of the 
Medici, 86. 

Parlamento, 95, 131, 132. 

Parties and party names in 
Florence, 125, 126. 

Pazzi conspiracy, 32. 

Piagnoni, 126, 166. 

Piazza della Signoria, scene of re- 
jection of Piero de Medici, 86 ; 
of the Burning of the Vanities, 
156, 157, 195 ; of the gathering 
for the ordeal by fire, 216, 217 ; 
of the death of Savonarola, 256- 
260. 

Pisa throws off allegiance to 
Florence, 89 ; Savonarola's visit, 
85, 87, 88. 

Plague in Florence, 149, 175. 

Plato, Savonarola's study of, 17, 
24, 25. 

Platonic Academy at Florence, 31, 
33, 34. 

Poems, Savonarola's, 15, 23. 

Poetry, Savonarola's views on, 158. 

Poggibonsi, 130, 131. 

Police, boy, organised by Savon- 
arola, 155, 156. 

Poliziano, Angelo, 31, 84. 

Prato, Savonarola's visit, 148. 

Preaching, character of Savon- 
arola's, 45, 47, 75, 76, 145. 

Prelates, Savonarola's sarcasm on, 
74, 75. 



272 



INDEX 



Prophecies, Savonarola's, believed 
in by himself, 65, 114, 115. 

Propositions, Savonarola's three, 
38. 

Pucci, Gionozzo, 179, 

Pulci, Luigi, author of Morgaiite 
Maggiore, 31. 

Rapallo, sack of, 80. 

Reform of San Marco Convent, 
69-72 ; of Florentine manners, 
119-121 ; of Carnival, 141, 156 ; 
of taxes, 104. 

Reggio, Chapter-General at, 36. 

Renaissance, 2-5 ; Savonarola's in- 
fluence on it, 6-9, 50, 51, 264- 
267. 

Revolution in Florence, 82, 86. 

Riario, Count, 32. 

Ridolfi, Niccolo, 179. 

Rieti, Tommaso da, 107. 

Robbia, Fra Luca della, 226. 

Romolino, Francesco, 247, 248, 250, 
251, 257. 

Rondinelli, Fra Giuliano, 210, 
218. 

Rovere, Cardinal Giuliano della, 
78, 205, 206. 

Rucellai, Bernardo, 55. 

" Ruina Ecclesiae, De," 23. 

" Ruina Mundi, De," 15. 

" Rule for Virtuous Living," 247. 

Sacrament, Savonarola's last, 254, 
255. 

Salviati, Marcuccio, 215. 

Salviati, Fra Roberto, 211, 219. 

San Gallo, convent and church of, 
56, 57. 

San Gemignano, 38. 

San Lorenzo, church of, Savon- 
arola's first attempt to preach in 
Florence, 34. 

San Marco, convent of, 28, 29 ; 
Savonarola's reforms and rela- 
tions with the monks, 69-73 ; 
attacked by the mob, 225 ; de- 
fection of the monks, 240, 241. 

Santa Croce, convent and church 
of, 209, 233. 



Savonarola, Elena, mother of Giro- 
lamo, 10 ; letter to her, 40, 41. 

Savonarola, Girolamo, Fra, birth 
and parentage, 10 ; boyhood and 
early education, 11-13 ; religious 
broodings, 14, 15 ; love episode, 
16 ; resolves on the monastic life, 
17, 18 ; letter to his father, 19, 
20 ; austerities at Bologna, 21, 
22; poem, " De Ruina Ec- 
clesiae," 23 ; work among the 
novices, 24 ; study of Plato, 24, 
25 ; love for Old Testament, 25 ; 
preaches at Ferrara, 26 ; trans- 
ferred to Florence, 27 ; failure in 
his first preaching there, 34, 35 ; 
Chapter-General at Reggio, 36, 
37 ; fore-consciousness of his 
mission, 37 ; preaches in the 
provinces, where he puts forth 
his three propositions and finds 
his power, 38-41 ; recalled to 
Florence, 42 ; lectures in convent 
garden, 43 ; begins to preach in 
church of San Marco, and then 
in Cathedral, 44, 45 ; style of 
preaching and personal appear- 
ance, 44-48 ; influence on the 
Renaissance, 6-9, 50, 51 ; elected 
Prior of his convent, 53 ; atti- 
tude towards Lorenzo de Medici, 
53-60 ; preaches at Bologna, QQ- 
68 ; his reforms at San Marco, 
69-73 ; denunciations of prelates 
and princes, 74, 75 ; sermons on 
Noah's Ark, 76, 77, 80, 81 ; 
ambassador to Charles viii. at 
Pisa, 83-89 ; constrains Charles 
to leave Florence, 93, 94 ; re- 
establishes the Republican con- 
stitution in Florence, 98-107 ; 
endeavours to convert Florence 
into a Theocracy, 108-122 ; pub- 
lishes Comj^endiwn RevclaUonum 
in defence of his visions and pro- 
phecies, 115-117 ; reformation of 
manners, 119 ; difficulties in his 
work, 123-133 ; enmity of the 
Pope, 134-140 ; work among the 
young, 141, 142, 146, 147 ; the 



INDEX 



273 



offer of a cardinal's hat, 148, 149 ; 
new troubles with the Pope, 151, 
152 ; the burning of the " Vani- 
ties," 154-161 ; attitude towards 
art and poetry, 158-161 ; rescues 
the Medicean Library, 158, 159 ; 
gradual decline of his power, 166, 

167 ; insults by the Compagnacci, 

168 ; sentence of excommunica- 
tion, 169-171 ; his defence, 172, 
173 ; six months of silence, 
175-185 ; devoted conduct dur- 
ing the plague, 175, 176 ; letter 
of condolence to the Pope, 177, 
178 ; The TriumpJi of the Cross, 
184-186 ; defies the Pope, 189, 
190 ; strange challenge in front 
of San Marco, 194, 195 ; gather- 
ing shadows, 196, 197 ; letter of 
remonstrance to the Pope, 203, 
204 ; closes his public ministry, 
204, 205 ; efforts to procure a 
General Council of the Church, 
205-207; challenged to the 
ordeal by fire, 209-214 ; his 
convent attacked by the mob, 
225 ; surrender and imprison- 
ment, 231, 232 ; examination and 
torture, 234-237 ; second trial, 
238, 239 ; his monks break 
down in their allegiance, 240 ; 
writes in prison his expositions 
of 51st and 31st Psalms, 243-247 ; 
third trial, under Pope's com- 
missioners, 248-250 ; sentenced 
to death, 250 ; interview with 
his two companions in tribula- 
tion, 253 ; his last night on 
earth, 254 ; last Sacrament, 255 ; 
the death scene, 258-260 ; re- 
verence of his faithful disciples 
for his memory, 260 ; the cir- 
cumstances which embarrassed 
his career, 261-263 ; his real 
greatness, services, and place in 
history, 263-268. 

Savonarola, Michele, grandfather 
of Girolamo, 10, 11. 

Savonarola, Niccolo, father of Giro- 
lamo, 10 ; letter to him, 19, 20. 
18 



Scholastic philosophy, 12, 24. 
Silvestro Maruflfi, Fra, 212, 232, 

239, 252, 253 ; his death, 258. 
Simplicity of the Christian Life, On 

the, 148. 
Six Beans, Law of the, 104, 105. 
Sixtus IV., Pope, 22, 23, 32. 
Soderini, Paolo Antonio, 55, 100. 
Soldiers, Savonarola's remonstrance 

with, 26, 27. 
Spini, Dolfo, 155, 168, 215, 234. 
Strozzi, Alessandro, 219. 
Strozzi, Laodamia, unsuccessfully 

wooed by Savonarola, 16. 

Taxes, reform of, in Florence, 104. 
Tornabuoni, Lorenzo, 179. 
Tractates, Savonarola's devotional, 

73, 184. 
Trattato circa il Eeggimenio e 

Governo della Cittd di Firenza, 

100. 
Trial of Bernardo del Nero and 

the Medici conspirators, 179, 

180; of Savonarola, 234-240, 

248-250. 
Trium])h of the Cross, The, 154, 

184-186. 
"Turn of the Key," the, 198, 

205. 
Turriano, Giovacchino, 247. 

Ughi, Fra Mariano, 211, 224. 

Valoei, Francesco, 55, 100, 154, 
180, 226, 227. 

Vanities, Burning of the, 158-161, 
195. 

Vasona, Bishop of, 257. 

Venetian model, the, 100, 

Vespucci, Guid' Antonio, 55, 100, 
200. 

Violi, Lorenzo, reporter of Savon- 
arola's sermons, 112. 

Vision of the two crosses, 62, 63 ; 
of the sword, 64. 

Visions and prophecies, 48, 49, 
114, 115. 

Zati, Bartolo, 234. 



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XX. WILLIAM HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK. By James Sime, 
M.A., F.R.S.E. [Noio ready. 

XXI. WESLEY AND METHODISM. By F. J. Snell, M.A.(Oxon.). 

[^Now ready. 

XXII. LESSING AND THE NEW HUMANISM. Including Banmgarten 
and the Science of Esthetics. By Rev. A. P. Davidson, M.A. 

XXIII. HUME AND HIS INFLUENCE ON PHILOSOPHY AND 

THEOLOGY. By Professor J. Orr, D.D., Glasgow. 

XXIV. ROUSSEAU AND NATURALISM IN LIFE AND THOUGHT. 

By Professor W. H. Hudson, M.A., Leland Stanford Junior 
University, California. 

XXV. KANT AND HIS PHILOSOPHICAL REVOLUTION. By Pro- 
fessor R. M. Wenley, D.Sc, Ph.D., University of Michigan. 

XXVI. SCHLEIERMACHER AND THE REJUVENESCENCE OF 
THEOLOGY. By Professor A. Martin, D.D., New College, 

Edinburgh. 

XXVII. HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM. By Professor R. Mackintosh, 
D.D., Lancashire Independent College, Manchester. 

XXVIII. NEWMAN AND HIS INFLUENCE. By C. Sarolea, Ph.D., 
Litt. Doc, University of Edinburgh. 



AI^R 21 1902 



